SoapZone Community Message Board

Best American Short Stories 20205 (edited by Celeste Ng) - Every year, I like to read the collection of "best" short stories from the previous year. I have to give Ms. Ng credit; she did a nice job picking stories with a wide range of subjects and viewpoints. Too many years, the editor picks stories that lean into the trendy and topical. That being said...just for fun, I did a tally. Out of 20 stories, I liked 9, disliked 4 and was just "meh" on the remaining 7. And really, only one truly stuck with me, mostly for the shock ending. No rating (unless you count tallying what I liked and didn't like).

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey - It's the turn of the last century and an older childless couple moves to Alaska to homestead and try to forget about the baby they lost. One night they build a "snow child"--a snowman that looks remarkably like a little girl--and the next day, the snow child is gone. Shortly after, the couple spies a little girl and her pet fox running through the woods...could it be the snow child they made, come to life? I won't spoil anything for you but I will say this was my A+ read. Lyrical, moving, beautifully told and populated with great characters, I loved every single thing about this book and read it in two short sittings.

All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell - Non-fiction--as a child, HC had an insatiable curiosity about death and dying. As an adult, she became a journalist and set out to interview people with jobs pertaining to death. As someone who does NOT have an insatiable curiosity about death and dying, I...don't even know why I put this book on my "to-read" list. I read the introduction and got about halfway through the first chapter in which the author goes to a mortuary and aids in dressing a corpse. I stopped reading, went back to the chapter list and picked out two more chapters to read. One was an interview with a crime scene cleaner who seems a little...unsavory, for some reason. The other was an interview with a British bereavement midwife. I didn't even know such a position existed...a British bereavement midwife provide emotional and practical support to families who experience a miscarriage, a stillbirth or a neonatal death. It was every bit as depressing as you can imagine, even as I admired and respected the nurse who took on such a challenge. Ranking: incomplete.

The Book Woman's Daughter by Kim Michele Richardson - It's been a while since I read The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, which I absolutely loved. I think it was someone here who mentioned KMR had written a sequel...I checked it out and while I liked it quite a bit, I didn't love it like I loved the original. I can't even say why...I think it just felt less like an organic story and more like "oh, there's room for a sequel so I shall write one!". It was more of the same: the same fights against discrimination, the same sad stories and circumstances, even the same job for the daughter as the mother. B-.