I'm currently reading from "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twentieth Annual Collection," edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant. I love this yearly collection. I own every volume, and buy it every year as soon as it comes out. What I like about it is that it includes a broad range of stories from both mainstream and genre publications that feature elements of the fantastic, the scary or the horrific. The editor's willingness to go outside traditional genre boundaries gives them a much wider range of stories to select from and allows for an overall higher literary quality than might otherwise be possible. I also enjoy the yearly summations of the different genres and the editor's selections of the best published works in those genres.
If I had any complaint about the series it would be that I often feel like many of the stories chosen reflect an aggressively left-wing, secular, anti-Christian view of the world, (sometimes almost self-consciously so) which is a turn off, as not only do I not share this world-view, but I don't like art, literature, or music of any kind which feels like it has an agenda behind it. Nevertheless, while I don't usually love or even like every story included, I always find some good stuff in these collections.
Right now I'm reading the story "Drowning Palmer" by Sarah Monette. I was inspired to read this particular story because a review on Amazon.com said it was boring and I wanted to see if I agreed. So far I am enjoying the story very much, so I guess I don't agree.
Friday, July 18, 2008
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