The Best American Erotica 2006, edited by Susie Bright

I remember the first erotic stories I read--it was a collection someone Bookcrossed to me and the book was waterproof because it was meant to be read in the bathtub. I thought that was the neatest feature of the whole book.

But I've become fascinated by erotica ever since. (Trivia: Did you know Margaret Mitchell had a substantial erotica collection?) And you know, it's hard to find good erotica. I read some of it online; most of that is horrible, far more pornographic than literary. Usually the best are gems that come from a scene in a book, something unexpectedly delicious and tantalizing.

But The Best American Erotica 2006 didn't do much for me. With Susie Bright's reputation, I'm sorry to say that I found this collection dull. There was an amusing story called "Stalin's Mustache" that I'll probably remember for years, but the rest of them--pretty forgettable.

Maybe 2006 just wasn't a good year for erotica.


Book Source: Personal library

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

I love Neil Gaiman's graphic novel series The Sandman (which, yes, was first a comic book), and I highly recommend Neverwhere, American Gods and Coraline, so when a friend offered to lend me Fragile Things, how could I say no?

I didn't realize that it was a short story collection, and even though I just finished another short story collection, I jumped in to this one. I even read the introduction (something I'm usually inclined to skip), which was charming and succinct--a little background about each of the included stories. If you read this, don't skip the intro.

I warmed to the stories slowly, not really getting into the book until "Bitter Grounds" on page 85 (possibly because of the story's quasi-academic scene). After that, I found the stories more readable and more likable, though they seemed to get more gruesome. Many of the first stories (and some of the later ones) were (slightly) altered retellings of favorite childhood ghost stories; those (mostly) didn't meet my expectations for something authored by Neil Gaiman.

There are a few stories for which I would recommend the book as a whole (the joy of short story collections: you can skip what you don't find yourself enjoying): "Bitter Grounds," "Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot," "Strange Little Girls," and "The Monarch of the Glen." (The last story is An American Gods novella.) But if it's between Fragile Things and one of the other Gaiman works listed in the beginning, go for the other one.

A few lines I found interesting (or funny):

• I was beginning to wonder whether he had a right arm. Maybe the sleeve was empty. Not that it was any of my business. Nobody gets through life without losing a few things on the way.
• There's no making her do anything. Not her. She's Mary Poppins.
• I think the world will end in black-and-white, like an old movie.
• We save our lives in such unlikely ways.

One More Year by Sana Krasikov

Sana Krasikov has an impressive and complicated life sparsely laid out in just a few sentences on the back of her collection of short stories One More Year. Born in the Ukraine and raised in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and the US, I'm sure Krasikov finds many inspirations for her writing in the people of her childhood.

I expected a greater variation in her characters, but each story seemed just a little different from the last, with even the characters' names and personalities overlapping just enough that readers aren't immediately sure whether it's the same character from the story before. The world Krasikov displays is a world full of distrust, mistrust, misanthropy, and other flaws that you'd expect to get you down. Somehow, though, Krasikov buoys her stories and characters with just enough likability that you're willing to trust her to make it worthwhile, to make her gritty and painfully imperfect characters redeemable.

I can't say whether I'm disappointed that the stories all felt so similar. Each main character seemed to be a woman who has had a sense of independence thrust upon her and she struggles with whether to embrace it or not. Most of the men are unfaithful and married to women who aren't in the story. Plenty of characters seem to feel a sense of entitlement. And yet, each story is different--each is separated from the other by a change in setting, a slight alteration of voice.

All of it created a completely foreign world to me, a world I was vastly uncomfortable lingering in. And, again, I haven't sorted out whether I liked that or not, but I do agree with many other reviewers: Krasikov is very good at her craft.

Thanks to Spiegel & Grau for sending me an ARC!

Last Notes and Other Stories by Tamas Dobozy

I know I said that I'm not usually drawn to short stories, but . . . .

Last Notes is, foremost, a collection of character studies. The character holds more sway than setting or plot. And no character exists as comedy relief. Each occupies his(/her) own space and insists on being taken seriously, even while tottering on the edge of madness.

Subjects which would easily lead other authors to humorous writing are instead treated with all formality, credibility, and compassion, even in "Phillip's Killer Hat," the story of two brothers, one with an unidentified mental illness and the other who acts as his caretaker and his foil, and in "The Man Who Came out of the Corner of My Eye," the story of a man who alienates himself from his friends and his wife and then begins to see and hear a man who only appears in his peripheral vision, and who claims to want to make a business of helping people detach from their friends and family.

I found myself thinking fondly of literary critics (only because I don't have to tease out these ideas unless I actually want to) and what they would have to say about the resistance of the Hunagrian immigrant characters to accept Canada as 'home'. What would be made of the woman in "Tales of Hungarian Resistance" who had no stories of her own to tell, but only commentary based on her husband's stories? or of the two main characters who box out their marital issues in "Into the Ring"? And then there's "Radio Blik," a story with postmodern tendencies, and so many other critical crevices that I would have to turn to my old literary criticism book to even get started.

Dobozy's collection was a fast and furious switch from Carol Shields's stories. I found it harder to read cover to cover because the humor was darker, less playful, but no less impressive for its more serious nature.

Like a rich seven course meal, these stories are not to be ingested in giant gulps, but in small bites. Each story needs to be given time to settle before moving onto the next course; to try to inhale these experiences like a lunch in less than half an hour would be a mistake. This is a collection to savor.

Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields

I don't usually go for short story collections when I select what to read next. Maybe they remind me too much of forced readings from school (both from my days as a student and as a teacher). Or maybe I've just been confused by what was supposed to be top notch writing in upper tier publications because I didn't understand them, or what about them was considered good. Lately, though, I've found myself gravitating towards a few different authors, just to try them out. First was Alice Munroe, whose collection Runaway I enjoyed, but I gave up on whichever collection I tried to read next.

Then came Dressing Up for the Carnival. This collection of stories--truly short, with the longest story being a mere 20 pages--is easy and pleasurable to read. I particularly enjoyed Shield's playful sense of language. "Absence" was delightful, ticklish to the intellect, a story about a writer with a stuck key on her keyboard ("But after she had typed half a dozen words, she found that one of the letters on the keyboard was broken, and to make matters worse, a vowel, the very letter that attaches to the hungry self."). Shields herself doesn't use an instance of that vowel in her story.

I intend to reread Dressing Up for the Carnival, to peel away some of the skins of the stories, because I'm quite certain I will love this book all the more for a second reading, and find quite a different collection underneath than the first reading presented me with. Other stories that I look forward to re-encountering are:

• "Ilk"--the meeting of a pair of English professors at a conference; the narrative (as a mode) is treated almost as a debatable scientific phenomenon.
• "Windows"--a couple of artists find the recently imposed "window tax" a new challenge to their creativity.
• "Weather"--all of the nation's weathermen go on strike, and the country suffers a subsequent lack of weather.
• "A Scarf"--an author on tour decides to search for the perfect scarf for her daughter.

I suppose I could just list them all.
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About the book, from Random House of Canada