Pretty Monsters
Sarah gave me this book for Halloween, with the thought that short stories would be better for my postpartum brain. Which both did and didn't work out. It might have gone better if I'd found the stories more captivating. Or shorter. As it was, it took me a really long time to get through this book, and that wasn't all due to my sleep deprivation and lack of attention.
Kelly Link's stories are all somewhat meandering. And they don't really ever conclude. Just when things start to get interesting they end, often on a cliffhanger. Sometimes this works out. But more often than not I was confused, lost, and just plain uninterested. There were a couple of stories I found interesting. But for the most part this collection fell a little flat for me.
It's possible that I would have liked this better if I'd read it at a different time. But with a newborn, I needed something easy to read. And it turns out that short doesn't really equate with easy. A lot of these stories required a level of brain power that I just didn't have. Either that, or they required me to read the stories faster than 2-3 pages a day so I could track the stories a bit better. But the lack of forward momentum meant that even when I had time to read, I was often falling asleep as soon as I started.
Like I said, this wasn't a total loss. There were a couple of stories that I really enjoyed. It's probably no surprise that they were the shorter stories, the ones I was able to work through relatively quickly. Perhaps it would be worth revisiting these in the future and seeing if they stick in my brain better when I'm more awake.
Kelly Link's stories are all somewhat meandering. And they don't really ever conclude. Just when things start to get interesting they end, often on a cliffhanger. Sometimes this works out. But more often than not I was confused, lost, and just plain uninterested. There were a couple of stories I found interesting. But for the most part this collection fell a little flat for me.
It's possible that I would have liked this better if I'd read it at a different time. But with a newborn, I needed something easy to read. And it turns out that short doesn't really equate with easy. A lot of these stories required a level of brain power that I just didn't have. Either that, or they required me to read the stories faster than 2-3 pages a day so I could track the stories a bit better. But the lack of forward momentum meant that even when I had time to read, I was often falling asleep as soon as I started.
Like I said, this wasn't a total loss. There were a couple of stories that I really enjoyed. It's probably no surprise that they were the shorter stories, the ones I was able to work through relatively quickly. Perhaps it would be worth revisiting these in the future and seeing if they stick in my brain better when I'm more awake.
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