Books shelved under “Anthologies”

Years and years ago, I said that my love for space opera was dimming. Space opera has always been one step away from science fantasy, of course, but I was getting bored with how same same all the nanotech-fuelled, AI-high stories seemed to feel. In the last couple of years, something has changed. I don’t know if it is me or the field or both, but I have been loving space opera again! When I…

Asexuality is everywhere, yet because it is classically the absence of something, its presence can be difficult to see. Being Ace: An Anthology of Queer, Trans, Femme, and Disabled Stories of Asexual Love and Connection is an attempt to foreground asexuality within a variety of environments. Madeline Dyer has assembled an ace team (oh, you know the puns are just starting) of authors to contribute stories and even a poem that get you thinking. Cody…

As I’ve said in the past, I am very selective about the anthologies I read. Novels are my jam when it comes to fiction, short stories and novelettes and novellas much less so. Nevertheless, when Derek Künsken’s collection Flight from the Ages And Other Stories came up on NetGalley, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to request an eARC for review. Künsken might fast become one of my favourite living science-fiction authors. Ever since I…

When I heard Janelle Monáe had a book coming out, of course I was going to read it! My public library even had a copy right away. The Memory Librarian is an anthology of science-fiction stories set in the world Monáe created for her Dirty Computer album and emotion picture. Jane 57821, the protagonist from those pieces, returns in one novelette (Nevermind). Other stories explore more corners of this world in which memories…

Full disclosure: I was a Kickstarter backer for this book. I was very excited for Common Bonds, because I am aromantic, but that’s an identity that isn’t well-represented in mainstream media (and when it is, it’s usually conflated with/paired with asexuality—I am also asexual, but I like the split attraction model because it helps me discuss my experiences with nuance). A great deal of this review will be me talking about the importance of…

I picked this up several years ago and am finally diving into it. It’s not what I expected—I was looking for something with essays, including personal essays, but this includes a lot more poems and other, shorter and more artistic pieces. IMPACT: Colonialism in Canada is an anthology that makes quite a statement. If it’s what you’re looking for, it’s going to satisfy. In my case, it wasn’t quite what I wanted, but don’t interpret…

You’d think the pandemic would mean I have more time to read rather than less, right? But for some reason my reading speed has decreased rather than increased. I’m making more of a comeback, but it still took me a long time to read and review Non-Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities. That shouldn’t reflect on the quality of this book. Similarly, I’m going to explain later that I’m kind of over these…

So I guess this is my coming out review? I actually have a blog post for that, but of course, some of my transition experiences thus far will be interspersed throughout this review.

Hello, world. I’m Kara now. (That’s pronounced Car-uh.) I’m a trans woman. My pronouns are she/her.

To My Trans Sisters seemed like a perfect book to read and then review on the day I came out online. It’s a collection…

I backed this on Kickstarter, but of course, then it sat on my shelf for a bit. Recently Gwen Benaway has been a prominent voice against Toronto Public Library allowing Meghan Murphy to host a talk at one of their branches. In following that news, I decided this was a good time to get to Maiden, Mother, Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes.

I really wish I could gush about this book and say I…

It seems like every time I review a short story anthology I always start with a disclaimer about how short stories, and by extension, their anthologies, are not really “for me.” In this case I need to say it because How Long ’Til Black Future Month? is one of those rare exceptions where I … I actually liked pretty much every story in here. Not equally, of course. But there were only one or two…

First, huge shout-out to the Oxford comma lurking in this title. Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal.

Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time is an anthology of queer Indigenous science fiction and fantasy by Indigenous authors. That’s it, and yet it is so much more. I really liked Hope Nicholson’s comment in her foreword about how some stories aren’t meant to be told, or at least, do not need to be shared with just…

Ever since the first Binti novella came out, I’ve been hearing all about it. I jumped at this collection when I saw it at the bookstore, then, because I find it difficult to grab hold of novellas otherwise. I don’t care if Tor.com pushes them on me for free sometimes: I need it in my hands or on my device or else I just … read other things. And I’m glad I read Binti and…

At least one book’s length, if not a whole library of, encomia of Ursula K. Le Guin has already been written by people far more learned than me. It’s so tempting to take this collection of her novellas and use it as an excuse to praise Le Guin as an author in general. Yet there isn’t much I can hope to add to that conversation. Yet The Found and the Lost, as a collection…

Sometimes we end up reading an author backwards, like Merlins travelling through literary space-time, always encountering younger, less experienced versions of the writer. I have long enjoyed Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction, and here I am reading her first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. So if I seem underwhelmed by these compared to the praise I’ve sung of her work in the past, it’s probably because her talents have only grown since she wrote…

Charles Yu’s characters are not very happy.

I wasn’t enthusiastic reading Sorry Please Thank You: Stories, for I wasn’t much of a fan of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Nevertheless, I’d acquired this collection prior to reading that novel, from a library sale, so I wanted to give Yu a second chance. I don’t think there will be a third.

The stories in here aren’t particularly bad. They just…

Last year I reviewed A Tyranny of Petticoats, which came on my radar because I received it in a Book Mail box from Book Riot. When I saw The Radical Element on NetGalley, I wanted to see how the second volume of this anthology series compared. Thanks to NetGalley and Candlewick Press for the eARC! I adored this book for what it is, and while I didn’t love every story, it was a great…

“Best of” collections can be fun, sometimes, because they might introduce you to authors you might not otherwise have encountered. I found Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition in a library sale and decided to give it a shot. Other Goodreads reviewers have already pointed this out, but I’ll echo them: rather disappointing to see Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe’s names on the cover but no stories from them in the collection. WTF?…

Wow did I write really long reviews back in the day! I was just reading back over some of my Nancy Kress reviews to remind myself what I thought of her other works. I went into a lot of detail with my Sleepless trilogy reviews. I guess that was the privilege of having more time in third-year university. Now I’m an adult, with a job, and a house for just over a week as…

Women don’t need me to say this, because they know this, and many have said this themselves, but I’ll boost it: the thing about representation is that it isn’t enough to give people one character, one story, one thing and say, “There, you’ve representation, job done.” So I was excited when I received A Tyranny of Petticoats in a Book Riot Book Mail box. Those of you who have read my reviews for a while…

Here Douglas Coupland goes again, trying to break our brains and our library cataloguing systems. Is Bit Rot fiction or non-fiction? It’s a collection of both! Oh noes! It contains short stories, including some previously published in Generation A (which I read almost 7 years ago, so I have zero recollection of any of it), and essays and assorted musings. In general, this is Coupland’s most up-to-date published writing on how we’re dealing with the…