anna genoese

My watermelon sorbet was terrible. The flavor was just completely wrong and more than a little off. I think a big part of that was the watermelon being way past ripe -- I should have ditched it and bought a fresh watermelon. Plus I used Rachael Ray's recipe, which included a half-cup of light corn syrup, and that was the dominant flavor (plus one cup of the watermelon had to be heated up, which definitely brought out very gross scents and flavors). Ugh. Next time I'm going to try the recipe that is just 5 cups of chunked watermelon, 1/4 - 1/2 cup of sugar to taste, and 2 tbsp of lime juice blended together and then frozen.

Day 17 - Favorite story or collection of stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.)

I am not really a short story kind of person. I find it really difficult to care about what's going on in a story that's under 10,000 words. That's one of the great things about fanfic for me -- I already care about the characters in the story, so 1,000 words is still satisfying. But it takes a really skilled writer to have brand new characters and a brand new word in a story and world build enough for me to be interested and give me enough character development to make me care and amidst all that actually tell a story.

(That's something I tend to really like about the short form romance stories -- they are usually at least 20,000 words, if not 25,000, so there's time to really get into the characters and their situations.)

I really enjoyed reading Tiptree's short fiction, although I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that I liked it. Reading it from a perspective of knowing Tiptree's secret "real life" identity of Alice Sheldon (and I read most of it after I read her biography by Julie Phillips) definitely altered the way I read the stories, although I'm not sure I can put my finger on exactly how. That's my own personal perspective, though, and I know a lot of people who loved Tiptree before her "secret identity" came out.

I thought "The Screwfly Solution" (arguably her most famous story? Probably) was okay, and much preferred stories like "The Women Men Don't See" and "A Momentary Taste of Being"; all three of those are in Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, which is a good intro to her most famous work.

Candas Jane Dorsey has a bunch of short stories, most of which I really enjoyed reading.

Vanilla and Other Stories is worthwhile and intense, and Machine Sex and Other Stories is also great.

The best collection of short stories (etc.) I ever read, though, has got to be Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life: and Others. It was originally published by Tor, so I read it when it was in proofs, and then bought copies for everyone I knew who'd love it (which was a bunch of people!). The stories are all really well written. I think most of them were originally published elsewhere, and then collected with one or two original stories for the book. Right now it's out of print, but Small Beer Press is releasing a new edition in October. (Or the older versions are cheap on alibris, if that's your thing.)

My favorite Chiang story is "Hell is the Absence of God" (that link is to fictionwise, where it's available by itself as e-text in various formats for $1.15). I tend to recommend this story to people who are into angels and people who are fans of seasons 4 and 5 of Supernatural -- even if neither of those things are what you're into, you might like this story, since it's awesome.

Your turn! As always, you are welcome to post your answers or a link to your own blog post in the comments, even if you are not answering the other prompts in the meme.

( Other days of the book meme )