Well, looks like we’ll all have more reading time, eh? Hope you’re doing okay.
Here’s what I read this week:
| 3/15/20 | The Lovely Kisselthwist | Karen Heuler |
| 3/16/20 | Wolf Trapping | Kij Johnson |
| 3/17/20 | The Scattering | Daisy Johnson |
| 3/17/20 | Orange Dogs | Marian Womack |
| 3/18/20 | The Zhanell Adler Brass Spyglass | Helen Marshall |
| 3/18/20 | El Arbol (The Tree) | Cynthia Pelayo |
| 3/18/20 | The July Girls | Alison Littlewood |
| 3/19/20 | The Neighbor’s Courtyard | Mariana Enriquez |
| 3/19/20 | Rare Birds, 1959 | L.S. Johnson |
| 3/20/20 | What It Means when a Man Falls from the Sky | Lesley Nneka Arimah |
| 3/21/20 | Don’t Try This at Home | Angela Readman |
I spend a lot of time looking for the next story that will make me hold my breath, and have to “take a minute” once the story has finished. The closest I came to that feeling this week was with Marian Womack’s Orange Dogs. A man tries to support his heavily-pregnant wife, in a post-apocalyptic world. Not the best story to be reading given the current climate, but there is some beautiful imagery in there. Glad I finally got my hands on Womack’s collection. You can read the story online here!
Wolf Trapping by Kij Johnson is another story that will stay with me. A man, monitoring wolf pack activity in the middle of nowhere, comes across a woman who wants to literally run with the pack. Johnson creates such a wonderful, vivid atmosphere; I swear I could hear the snowstorm at times. And look, you can read it here!
My other favorite story this week is July Girls, yet another one by Alison Littlewood, which can be found in the new Ellen Datlow anthology, Echoes. The narrator finds even death cannot end the battle with her step-sister, as her disjointed family take a vacation to try and heal their wounds. So creepy and claustrophobic.
So my search for my next favorite story continues. I plan on reading works by Julia Elliot, Vernon Lee, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Sara Levine, Joan Aiken, and Damien Angelica Walters. I also have a wonderful physical copy of Bourbon Penn issue 20 that I want to get stuck into.
Any recommendations of female-written weird fiction are always welcome. Stay safe!
California Reading 