Notes on Reading

I've finished The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Seventeenth Annual Collection (which has an unnacountably low rating at Amazon.com of only two stars; if you read it and liked it, go give it a rave!). Lots of good stuff here, although as always there were a few that didn't grab me. But with stories like "The Fishie" and "The Fluted Girl" and "L'Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)" still swimming around in my head, I came out a big winner.

Even though Gwenda beat me to it, I'm linking here to Jeffrey Ford's Fountain-Award-winning-story, The Annals of Eelin-Ok, now available online. I read it last night, and it's very good.

Also, I have to add to the chorus of folks telling all of you to read Margo Lanagan's Black Juice. I've only read four of the stories thus far, but two of them left me speechless and one had me all a-sniffles. I'm curious which one of these stories will be in this year's Year's Best, because any one of them could be. In fact, I'm off to read another right now.