The Pleasures of 2019: A Short List
by Kristin King
If I could just pick out four works this year to recommend, they would be:
In the Quiet Spaces by C. E. Young. This book is pocket-sized and goes with me 'most everywhere, and it always tells me something I need to hear. I’d explain it, but God is not in the explanations.
Talk Like a Man by Nisi Shawl. The story “Women of the Doll” takes an unforgettable superhero through her paces, and the essay “Ifa: Reverence, Science, and Social Technology” has given me hefty food for thought about how people make community.
The Expanse (novel series) by James S.A. Corey went through our family like the flu, one by one succumbing and losing hours, maybe days, at a time. I’ll never feel the same way about gravity again.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang gave me solace when I needed it most. Chiang had me at the story “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” which mixes the fairy-tale setting of the Arabian Nights together with time travel to create philosophical breakthroughs. One way or another, all his stories are that way.
Kristin King (http://kristinking.wordpress.com) is a writer,
parent, and activist who lives in Seattle. Her work has appeared in Strange
Horizons, Calyx, The Pushcart Prize XXII (1998), and other places. Two of her
stories appeared in an Aqueduct Press anthology, Missing Links and Secret
Histories: A Selection of Wikipedia Entries Lost, Suppressed, or Misplaced in
Time. A selection of her short fiction has been collected in Misfits from the
Beehive State.
No comments:
Post a Comment