Erin's Book #50: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

YES! I did it! For a while it was looking kinda iffy, but I managed to pull it off.

Oscar Wao has been on my list for a while, but I didn't really know what it was about. It's an interesting book - Oscar is an aspect of it, but not the entire story. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Jersey, Oscar is a fat nerd that just wants a girl, but spends his time writing, reading, and watching sci fi, graphic novels, and anime. We are also introduced to his beautiful older sister, his cancer-stricken mom, and his grandmother, who still lives in DR. Each character has their own story, each more fascinating than the last. What I love about this book is how your perception of the characters change, depending on whose story it is. These characters have survived dictatorships, heartbreak, beatings, and worse, perhaps all because of a curse, fuku.

Oscar Wao is not the quickest read; Diaz includes lots of historical footnotes and there's a decent amount of Spanish in it, which slowed me down a little (kept translating in my head). But I found the characters and the world they inhabited fascinating.

Erin's Book #49: Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen

This is a tough book. Beautifully written, but tough subject matter. Frances Benedetto, fed up with being battered by her cop husband Bobby, takes her young son Robert and disappears, leaving behind her Brooklyn home and starting a new life as Beth Crenshaw in a small Florida town. She uses a program akin to Witness Protection, but specializing in abused wives. As Beth and Robert adjust to their new lives, they live in fear that Bobby will find them.

Beth is a strong woman, stronger than Frances. After being beaten for years, she finally leaves for her son's sake. But Bobby's shadow hangs over every page. Even as Robert makes friends and takes up sports, and Beth starts a new relationship and job, you just sense that Bobby is out there looking for her, wanting his revenge.

I won't spoil the ending, but I will say it was somewhat shocking to me. I'm curious to read more by Quindlen, and I have a feeling this one won't leave me very easily.

Erin's Book #48: The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg

After discovering Berg through We Are All Welcome Here, I was eager to read more of her work. I couldn't pass up this one's cover. It was enjoyable, though it can't compare to Welcome.

The Last Time I Saw You features an array of characters, all preparing for their fortieth high school reunion. Some are hoping to reconnect with old crushes, some have something to prove, and one just wants his wife back. I had some trouble keeping all the characters straight and found myself flipping back to earlier chapters to remember who was who.

This was an enjoyable read, but it felt very lightweight, despite many characters wrestling with very real and serious issues. Because it dealt with so many characters (and it's only about 240 pages), I didn't even have time to make up my mind about who I liked and was rooting for. I liked it, but I won't remember it a month from now.

Erin's Book #47: Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

I snatched this book up after reading Belong to Me, which was the sequel. Oops. Turns out that, aside from knowing who the main character ends up with, it didn't really matter that I read the sequel first. In fact, I think I'm glad I did, as I liked this one much better.

The protagonist is Cornelia Brown, a young, single, smart but directionless woman looking for some answers. She thinks she finds them in the form of a handsome, wealthy older man. Through him, she meets Clare, a 12-year-old girl trying to keep her family together. The relationship between Cornelia and Clare is sweet and touching, and the heart of the novel.

Cornelia is a huge fan of old movies, particularly anything starring Cary Grant. The book is peppered with references to classic films, which was a fun touch. I felt this was a great opportunity to learn so much more about a character I liked, but didn't feel like I knew tons about. I read this entire book on a plane and it was a great choice for the flight - it was very easy to not put down.

Erin's Book #46: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

I discovered Kate Morton's The House at Riverton several years ago through a book club. It remains one of my favorites. Her novels have a very specific style - a present-day (or at least modern) character has some connection to the past and the books alternate between two time periods, as the modern characters slowly discover the truth about the past. Her settings are incredibly lush and vivid; she's a genius at transporting you to another time period, filled with wealth and elegance.

In The Distant Hours, a 30-year-old woman named Edie works as a publisher in 1992 in London. She discovers that her mother was an evacuee during the war and stayed for several months in a castle called Milderhurst, where the author of Edie's favorite childhood novel lived. Edie stumbles upon the castle one day when she gets lost and finds the three Blythe sisters, now all quite old, still living there. What follows is a mesmerizing mystery of love and heartbreak, madness and guilt. What connection does Edie's mom have to the sisters? What happened to the youngest sister's fiance? And what does any of it have to do with the origin of Raymond Blythe's beloved children's story?

I had more difficulty getting absorbed in this one than Morton's other two, but once I did, I literally couldn't put it down. It's a tragic tale, but a gratifying one, as all of the pieces slowly fit together. A beautiful romantic mystery that I highly recommend.

Erin's Book #45: Belong To Me by Marisa de los Santos

I have once again unknowingly bought the sequel to a book without reading the first one. Though in this case, I think it's less a continuation of the same story, and more just a different phase of a character's life. (Though I did just pick up the first book, Love Walked In, so I'll find out if that's really true).

From what I could tell, it really didn't matter if I read the other book first. Belong to Me follows three main characters in a suburban town - Cornelia, who recently gave up her city life for a quieter life with her gorgeous husband Teo; Piper, a frigid, snobby mother of two dealing with the impending death of her terminally ill best friend, as well as her own failing marriage; and Dev, the brilliant young son of single mom Lake, who has moved him from the east coast to, by Dev's best guess, find the father he's never met. Over the course of the story, these three characters' lives intertwine in unforgettable ways.

Although this wasn't a book that I couldn't put down, I did really enjoy it. I like de los Santos's style and I really enjoyed the characters, who are all more than meets the eye. There was a bit of mystery to it, and the cancer story hit me hard, as I lost a close mentor to cancer just before I started this book, and then my young upstairs neighbor died of it while I was reading it. Though the tragedy is just one aspect of it, and it serves to ultimately liberate Piper from the life she thought she needed. Belong to Me is full of heartbreak, victory, love, loss, and life.

Erin's Book #44: The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

I had a little bit of trouble getting into this book and I'm not sure why. I enjoyed it, but I think I liked it a bit more in theory than in reality.

The Wednesday Sisters are a group of friends in Palo Alto, CA in the '60s. There's Frankie, who has always nursed dreams of being a writer, Kath, who's struggling with a falling-apart marriage, Ally, who can't conceive with her Indian husband (which in itself was shocking at the time), Brett, who inexplicably always covers her hands in gloves, and Linda, a tough-talking feminist.

The five women, all in their 20s when the novel starts, discover they all have a passion for writing and decide to form a writing group. They meet Wednesday mornings and critique each others stories. Through their writing, they discover more about themselves - what it means to be a woman in the '60s, the dreams they abandoned when getting married that they can possibly recapture - and in the process find the best friends they can imagine.

There's a lot to like about this book - the characters are varied and sympathetic, the sprinkling of '60s history is entertaining, the feminist plot lines are fascinating, and it's a great testament to friendship. But I just couldn't breeze through it the way I felt I should. Sometimes I felt things were very obvious, but the characters didn't pick up on them until many chapters later. The ending was a little unrealistic, though cute. Though I wouldn't rule out reading something else by Clayton, it probably won't be first on my list.

Erin's Book #43: The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle

I have one major beef with this book: its marketing. The Kindness of Strangers is largely about the sexual abuse of a child and yet nowhere on the book's jacket does any indication of that appear. I would think that many people would find themselves unable to finish this book and might want to know what they're getting into ahead of time.

That said, this book is terrific. We begin with Sarah, a woman who lost her husband to cancer two years ago and struggles to raise her two sons alone. She is helped by her friend Courtney Kendrick, a wealthy woman whose son, Jordan, is the same age as Sarah's youngest, Danny (10 or 11). Sarah also has an older son, Nate, who has had a few run-ins with the cops and is frequently in trouble at school.

One day Sarah encounters Jordan walking in the rain, late for school. She offers to give him a ride. That day, both of their lives change.

It turns out that Jordan has been suffering from sexual abuse (the publishers may not feel that potential readers should know this before reading, but I do). The question becomes, was Courtney involved? Did she know? If so, why does Jordan seem dead set on living with her again? Sarah is dumbfounded, at first blindly refusing that it was even possible. It raises an interesting question - do we really know anyone? Sarah was convinced that Courtney was a dedicated, concerned, wonderful mother. Was she capable of molesting her son?

I won't reveal more about the plot, but Sarah's family bands together to come to Jordan's aid, ultimately strengthening their own ties. There are certainly some very disturbing parts to the story, and it's incredibly tragic, but it's also honest and somewhat uplifting.

Erin's Book #42: Something Blue by Emily Giffin

Something Blue is the sequel to Something Borrowed (which I'm really glad I read first). It presents the opposing side of the story - Darcy's, the beautiful woman whose fiance is stolen by her best friend. But it's not just her side of that story; it's also a continuation. Most of the book takes place after the fiance theft, following Darcy, to whom everything has always come easy, on her new single life as a pregnant woman.

I'd read a few reviews that said they hated Darcy in Borrowed, but loved her in Blue. For two-thirds of the book, I had the opposite feelings. When reading a story from the point of view of her best friend of 25 years who stole her fiance, it was easy to feel sorry for Darcy. Reading Darcy's own perspective, however, made it even clearer why Rachel deserved him more. Darcy is incredibly entitled, understanding from a very early age how much power her beauty allowed her. She expects to get exactly what she wants. It's tiresome.

Eventually, after heartbreak, regret, and fleeing the country, Darcy comes to terms with the fact that she's actually about to become a mom. Perhaps it's time to make some changes. She unearths a pretty decent person, consciously rejecting some of the more shallow aspects of her personality.

Something Blue was a nice change of pace from Freedom, as it was a quick and breezy read. I probably enjoyed Something Borrowed a little more, but you definitely have to read both to see how the story comes together. It feels much more conclusive now.

Erin's Book #41: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Wooh! This one was a beast! I hadn't read anything by Franzen before, but I knew this was supposed to be one of the year's hot books, so I decided to give it a try. Franzen didn't disappoint.

Clocking in at 650+ pages, this complex family drama is sprawling, intense, a little exhausting, and emotional. The book follows the Berglund family, husband Walter, wife Patty, and their children Jessica and Joey, plus Walter's best friend, Richard. Alternating between an omniscient narrator and Patty's autobiography (a therapy project), we follow the Berglunds from Patty's high school years to meeting Walter in college, and up through their children going to college. Franzen also tells us about their respective families as well (which can sometimes go on a little too long).

Franzen doesn't bother attempting to make the Berglunds likable. There are no real heroes here. I went from liking Patty to hating her to liking her to hating her to feeling bad for her to kind of liking her.... and so on. These are deeply flawed characters, capable of evil, vindictive betrayals. The lack of allegiance to each other is shocking. But it makes for a fascinating character study. There's plenty of other stuff sprinkled in - Walter's work for a conservation trust and his goal to reduce overpopulation result in pages of diatribe, but it's all interesting. Freedom is full of drama and tragedy, and Franzen weaves a masterful tale of the conflicts that might destroy the Berglunds forever. Worth the read.

Erin's Book #40: The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald

I had no idea such things existed, but apparently through the 1960s, there were home ec programs that taught college girls mothering skills using "practice babies", infants borrowed from orphanages.

Henry House (as in "house baby") is one such baby. Arriving at the practice house at just shy of four months old, he is handed off weekly to one of six different "mothers". The practice house is run by Martha Gaines, 48, a stern but lonely woman, still suffering from the loss of her own baby many years before.

Although Martha has helped raise many babies before, Henry awakens inside of her an intense longing. Despite her tough rules encouraging the mothers to teach babies not to expect being picked up every time they cry, she finds herself yearning to hold him all the time.

When Henry's time in the practice house is up, Martha decides she wants to keep Henry as her own son. And she does, raising him in the upstairs of the practice house while practice babies and mothers rotate downstairs.

As Henry grows up, he learns of the truth of his upbringing and grows to intensely despise Martha. As punishment to her, he stops talking when he's 9. For years. By ninth grade, he is sent away to a boarding school for mentally defective teens.

The book stays with him until he's in his twenties and, although he is the main character, my heart broke for poor Martha, the woman whose only desire in life was to love and be loved by Henry. And yet he hated her for the way she smothered him and the lies about his past she told.

It's a fascinating look at practice babies and the way their unusual first years shape them as adults. Another practice baby reappears later in the story, exhibiting the same restlessness, always ready to move on to the next person or place. The characters are vivid and intriguing. I enjoyed it immensely.

Erin's Book #39: Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin

I've said before that I enjoy chick lit every now and then. But I do have standards - it has to be decent, not poorly written crap (I'm looking at you, Sophie Kinsella). I grabbed Something Blue at a book sale and then realized it was the sequel to Something Borrowed, so I figured I'd better read this one first.

This definitely qualifies as good chick lit. Giffin takes what could be very standard bad chick lit fare and elevates it to something more. Something Borrowed centers on best friends Rachel and Darcy. Since they were little kids, Darcy has always been the beautiful, perfect, gets-whatever-she-wants type. Rachel has always played second fiddle, giving in to whatever Darcy wants. As they've gotten older, Darcy has become even more selfish and entitled.

On Rachel's thirtieth birthday, she has a little too much to drink and winds up in bed with Darcy's fiance, Dex. Rachel was actually the one to introduce Darcy and Dex, figuring that the gorgeous, smart law student was out of her own league. Well as it turns out, that's not the case. Rachel and Dex fall for each other, while Darcy plans her wedding.

It's a risky move, making the Other Woman the protagonist (the sequel, Something Blue, focuses on Darcy instead). I was conflicted reading it, knowing that Dex is much better with Rachel, but feeling that the whole thing was, well, just wrong. I wasn't quite sure how I wanted it to end. I enjoyed Rachel as a heroine though; her issues and doubts made her easy to relate to and root for. I'm looking forward to reading the follow up.

Erin's Book #38: We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg

The backstory to this book, which Berg explains in the introduction, is almost as fascinating as the book itself - a fan wrote Berg, begging her to write a story about her mother. Berg told her that she was a fiction writer, so if she wanted a true story, she should go elsewhere. The woman replied that she wanted Berg to do it, however she wanted. She also included a picture of her mom, which convinced Berg to write it.

As she specified, this is not a true story. But it is inspired by a real woman.

Thirteen-year-old Diana's mother contracted polio while pregnant with her. She gave birth in an iron lung, where she remained for three years. Since then, she has been completely paralyzed. Diana shares caregiving responsibilities with two other women, most notably Peacie, their tough but kind-hearted day worker.

This is a beautiful story of a young girl, coming of age, and her incredible mother. Paige is a tremendous character; Diana says that people often forget that she's paralyzed and that comes across on the page. They are very poor, forced to rely on the money they're given for a night caregiver to instead by groceries, but they have all have a strong bond.

I really really enjoyed this book and have already bought one more by Elizabeth Berg.

Erin's Book #37: Shopgirl by Steve Martin

He's a comic legend. He plays the banjo. He writes. Is there anything Steve Martin can't do?

I'd always been curious about Shopgirl and was pleasantly surprised by it. Although it's a much sexier book than I expected, Martin can really write. With some celebrities/actors/singers/etc that try to write, it's clear that they're only published because of who they are. Not the case here.

The main character is Mirabelle, a lonely twenty-something artist who is quite content to work the glove department at Neiman's. Ray Porter is a fifty-year-old millionaire who splits his time between Seattle and LA, where Mirabelle lives. Recently divorced, Ray courts younger women while also looking for "the One." Mirabelle becomes the object of his admiration, though the two want very different things. Meanwhile, in the background is Jeremy, a young slacker Mirabelle went on a couple mediocre dates with.

Martin is delightfully clever and astute (I read aloud to my boyfriend several passages I particularly enjoyed). He writes a female perspective really well. I felt the end came rather abruptly, though the conclusion was natural. All in all, a very entertaining light read.

Erin's Book #36: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

After seeing the trailer for the film adaptation several months ago, I was intrigued by Never Let Me Go, but didn't realize it was a book until Blythe wrote about it. Her post convinced me it was worth reading, so when I found it at a sale for $1, it was a no brainer.

It's difficult to write about the story without giving anything away. The only thing that's immediately apparent is that Hailsham, the boarding school that the three main characters (Kathy, who narrates, Ruth, her best friend, and Tommy, Ruth's boyfriend) attend is somehow out of the ordinary. The specific hows are revealed slowly throughout the story. Ishiguro is a master of drawing you in and intriguing you, though his reveals are natural. He drops enough hints to let you come up with theories and never presents information like it's shocking; instead, it's almost casual, because the narrator assumes you already know. In a way, that makes the truth even more haunting.

It's also very hard to put this book down. Ishiguro has all sorts of tricks to keep you reading, like ending most chapters with things like, "That's why what happened in the Square was so surprising" and "What Ruth said that day in the cemetery changed everything." (Note: those aren't actual examples, but they give you an idea). It takes great discipline not to keep reading to find out what happens.

Engrossing, creepy, and beautifully written, I highly recommend Never Let Me Go.

Erin's Book #35: Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

I had always heard of this book, but never had any particular desire to read it until I found it in the dollar bin at a bookstore. I breezed through it in less than a day and really enjoyed it.

Tita is a young girl madly in love with Pedro, but her ridiculously, horribly mean and tyrannical mother forbids her to marry, clinging stubbornly to the family tradition of the youngest daughter caring for the mother until her death. So Pedro marries Tita's sister, Rosaura, in an attempt to be near Tita. Their love endures births, deaths, moves, and more.

It's an interesting format - broken up in monthly installations, with each chapter beginning with a recipe. Food figures heavily into the story as Tita is the primary cook for their ranch and expresses her emotions through her food. It's also her path to Pedro.

With touches of magic realism, the book explores this dysfunctional Mexican family and the boundless love of Tita and Pedro. I think I'll rent the movie next.

Erin's Book #34: Shelter Me by Juliette Fay

Much like V and Red Hook Road, Shelter Me represents a great fear: Janie, mother of 2 (4-year-old Dylan and baby Carly), loses her beloved husband Robby in a bicycle accident. Shelter Me follows her first year as a widow as she gets closer to people she barely knew and even disliked prior to the accident. She leans heavily on her crazy, overbearing aunt, her nosy neighbor, her understanding priest, and eventually the hunky contractor her husband hired to build her a porch before he died. She has no shortage of romantic interests, if she can find it in herself to move on.

It is a testament to Fay's writing that Janie, a self-proclaimed angry, bitchy, and sometimes downright mean woman, remains endearing and intensely likable. Most of the time, she is holding on only for the sake of her young children. Janie and Robby had a truly happy, wonderful marriage, which makes his absence that much more painful.

As a reader, I shared the character's sentiments - wanting her to move on, yet feeling guilty for that desire. As the shattered family moves through the year, celebrating birthdays and holidays without Robby, the hole he left gradually feels like less of a blow. Fay's writing is so vivid that I found myself responding to the book in ways I haven't in some time, feeling incredibly caught up in the story. A beautiful book I highly recommend.

Erin's Book #33: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

I've wanted to read this book since seeing (and being very impressed with) Michael Pollan in Food, Inc. He's written several books on nutrition and the food industry, but this one seemed like a great one to start with. I plan on reading them all eventually.

There are so many conflicting reports on healthy eating that it's very difficult to know what's right. I can't be certain that Pollan's approach is right, but it makes a lot of sense to me. His basic assumption is that we shouldn't be trusting scientists and nutritionists to create our food. They take something natural that people have been eating for hundreds or thousands of years and take stuff out of it that they think is bad and add stuff back in that they think is good. Why should we trust them over nature? Especially when one of the first processed foods of this sort, margarine, initially was loaded with trans fat. And we all know how that turned out.

In Defense of Food launches a pretty scathing attack on the food industry. It's full of terrifying and disturbing statistics, such as:

• A child born in the year 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of developing diabetes.
  
• Bread, which can be made using flour, yeast, water, and a pinch of salt often contains 40+ ingredients.
• There are 17,000 new food products introduced each year

Much like our healthcare system, which treats illness instead of preventing it, the food industry does the same. Diabetes is becoming such a prevalant problem that instead of trying to prevent it, which would fundamentally change the Western diet as we know it, we create ways to make patients live longer. The slew of diet-related health problems we face in this country means a heap of new products to treat them.

Yes, Pollan's a bit cynical. But it seems hard not to be. It's completely outrageous the lack of control we have over our food. The typical Midwestern farm used to grow over a dozen species of crops and animals. Now it grows two - corn and soybeans. If you hadn't heard, they are in EVERYTHING.

Where Pollan differs from other stuff I've read is on the subject of "health" foods and low-fat foods. This goes back to his basic supposition. Scientists are removing fat, and often with it nutritious benefits, and then adding in a bunch of crap to account for it. And since the study of nutrition reduces foods to the nutrients they contain rather than the foods as a whole, we really don't know much. It may seem like this vitamin or that antioxidant are the key to healthy living, but it could be the other nutrients they interact with.

And while organic food contains more nutrients than industrialized food (not to mention the obvious benefit of the lack of pesticides), much of our organic food is now coming from China, thus traveling farther than our industrialized food!

But there is hope. Pollan suggests utilizing farmer's markets and CSA (community-supported agriculture) for as much food as you can. Beyond that, he's created a set of rules:

• Eat Food. In other words, avoid the food-like products that populate the grocery shelves. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup. Avoid food products that make health claims. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and avoid the middle.
  
• Eat mostly plants. Especially leaves. You are what you eat eats too (the diet of the animals we eat has a bearing on the nutritional quality of the food itself, from meat to milk to eggs. Most animals now live on grain, instead of the grass they're born to eat. Buy pastured eggs and grass fed beef). Eat well-grown food from healthy soils (this means organic but don't overlook the small farms that are organic but not certified so). Eat wild foods when you can. Be the kind of person who takes supplements (There's a lot of research that suggests supplements don't do much unless you're old, but people that take them tend to be healthier). Eat more like the French. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or the Indians. Or the Greeks. Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism. Don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet (We don't know what specific ingredient or combination of nutrients make traditional, non-Western diets work. They just do). Have a glass of wine with dinner (Hooray!).
  
• Pay more, eat less (We spend less money on food than most cultures and eat more of it). Eat meals (Don't snack all day. Eat real meals. With your family). Do all your eating at a table. Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does. Try not to eat alone. Consult your gut (Americans rely on external cues to stop eating - e.g. the plate is empty. The French stop eating when they're full. How novel! Use smaller plates). Eat slowly. Cook and, if you can, plant a garden (Change your relationship to food. Understand it better).

This may be a massive post, but I've only skimmed the surface. This is a fantastic book and I highly recommend you read it.

Erin's Book #32: Ape House by Sara Gruen

Ape House is by Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen. Since Elephants was one of my favorite books this year, I was excited when Ape House was released.

Though it doesn't quite compare to Elephants, I really enjoyed this book. Isabel Duncan is a researcher at a language lab for great apes, working closely with a group of bonobos who have learned to communicate with humans. They can understand spoken English and talk back in ASL. John Thigpen is a struggling reporter whose story on the bonobos is hijacked by a competing reporter. After a terrible event ends the lab's work, the bonobos are sold. Isabel, who considers the apes her closest family, sets off to uncover the truth and find the bonobos, while John reclaims the story to prove himself as a writer.

Much like Elephants, Ape House is meticulously researched. Though I probably wouldn't have picked this book up based only on the subject matter, that ended up being what I most liked. I appreciated the characters and the curious (though sometimes a little too serendipitous) turn of events, but the apes were the real draw. I had no idea that this kind of work was being done and how smart and human-like bonobos are. Their relationship with Isabel, and with each other, was truly touching. I'm currently reading In Defense of Food as well, and though that one's due back to the library this week, I found myself gravitating toward Ape House more and more.

Erin's Book #31: The Toynbee Convector & Other Stories by Ray Bradbury

I'd only read two things by Bradbury - Fahrenheit and Something Wicked This Way Comes - and thought both were fantastic, so I was excited to snatch up this compilation at a book sale for $1.

It's compiled of many, many short stories, generally just a few pages long. The stories sort of run the gamut - most have a sci fi/supernatural angle (a lot of ghosts and a little time travel) but then some are just about people being people.

A few I enjoyed quite a bit, some others I wasn't too fond of, and some I didn't totally get. To be honest, I was a little disappointed in the collection. Some of the stories just weren't that great. And almost all of them were too short to really flesh out any idea or character. I don't regret reading them, but I probably won't buy another short story collection from him.