by Ling Ma (2022)

2025 reads, 7/25:

“Were we processing trauma or were we simply re-experiencing it?”

I have decided, once again, to embark on a short story collection. I’m not sure why I keep coming back, the medium isn’t quite my favorite (the only short story collection I’ve really loved was Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House). Ling Ma’s collection Bliss Montage is highly regarded, so I decided to experience its eight short stories spanning different ideas written in a similar style. I actually must thank Jeff Rosenstock for this suggestion.

“‘Am I lacking in some way?’ I asked. ‘Are you?’ She wouldn’t stop, I thought, until she had totally consumed me. I’d end up in her digestive tract, as she metabolized my best qualities and discarded the rest.”

These stories are dreamlike, surreal, yet at the same time extremely grounded in situations that women, especially those in diaspora, can relate to. I’m impressed by Ma’s writing technique and how she manages to accomplish this. A commonality between these stories is that they have abrupt endings – not cliffhangers, just “cuts to black” – which was likely purposeful. It seems that Ma places a lot of weight on the reader to understand the meaning of each story, which I respect; almost every story is an allegory in some sense, some easy to pick up on, others not so much (maybe it’s just because I’m a white guy though). But it was enlightening to read a lot of these, and I got a lot out of them.

“He was always just standing there, not making and social gestures. How was he so special that he didn’t have to work to justify his existence? I’d wonder. I was constantly overcompensating back then.”

The first three stories (“Los Angeles”, “Oranges”, “G”) and second-to-last (“Peking Duck”) were my favorites, as they touched on themes such as domestic abuse, friendship, family and relationships. “Peking Duck” seems to be a meta-story for the entire collection, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. So check out Bliss Montage if these stories seem interesting to you. Of course, the catch-22 with short stories in general is that different stories appeal to different people – but you have to read the whole collection to get to know your favorites. I promise, you will see things differently once you do.

“English is just a play language to me, the words tethered to their meanings by the loosest, most tenuous connections. So it's easy to lie. I tell the truth in Chinese, I make up stories in English… It is the language in which I have nothing to lose, even if they don't believe a thing I say”

#readingyear2025 #shortstories #fantasy

by Italo Calvino (1972)

2025 reads, 5/25:

“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

A reread of one of my favorites. My wife gifted me the beautiful Folio Society edition of this book for Christmas, and only having read it on Kindle, I immediately wanted to experience all its literary and descriptive glory on the physical page. My appreciation for Invisible Cities has grown since I first read it a couple years ago, as I find myself thinking about it now and again, rereading certain passages just for the sheer brilliance of the descriptions. But this being my second full time around, I not only gain a deeper appreciation of Calvino’s prose, but how Invisible Cities fits into the world we live in today.

For the uninitiated, Invisible Cities is a novel that contains fifty-five poetic descriptions of different cities, interspersed throughout a conversation between world-class explorer Marco Polo and the great emperor Kublai Khan, who wishes to know more about his empire. And although it is outright said in one of their conversations, I'm not sure I subscribe to the notion that Marco Polo is describing Venice in different ways.

“No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it. And yet between the one and the other, there is a connection.”

I could see Calvino using different viewpoints of Venice as an inspiration for some of these cities (a subtle but important difference). But who’s to say that these descriptions can’t describe other cities? I could see Despina (Cities and Desire 3) as a physical representation of San Francisco. Valdrada (Cities and Eyes 1) could represent Cleveland, or any city on a lake, or even any city that makes you feel like you’re being watched. And Zaira (Cities and Memories 3) reminds me of visiting my hometown years after moving away. But these are just my interpretations, based on memories and experiences of cities I’ve been to.

And many of these descriptions are not even about cities themselves, but how people see cities, how people see themselves, even how people see each other. By 2050, the United Nations estimates that over two-thirds of the world's population will live in a city, and since the best cities are a collection of diverse citizens, I could see an interpretation where a person who desires sees a city differently than a person with memory, or a person towards the beginning or end of their life – we all perceive in different ways. Yes, one could say all of these cities describe Venice. But I’ll extrapolate that a bit – why just Venice? Why not take thirty different people from New York, Tokyo, São Paulo, or Beirut? Ask them to describe where they live, and even within the same city you’ll find incredibly different views. A city, a home, is what you make of it.

“So the garden remained a shapeless waste, until the benevolent tsar, passing by one day, glanced at it by chance, and ordered them to tell him what kind of garden it was.”

In M83’s “Midnight City” he sings

“the city is my church it wraps me in its blinding twilight”

– and who, at times, hasn’t felt the religious allure to skyscrapers, sidewalks, alleyways, lights, walkability, and community. Invisible Cities explores this, through memories, through trade, through love and fear, through death. This is within my top five books of all time – it’s that good. If you decide to read it and succumb to the imagination of Calvino and all these fantastical cities, I hope you share my love for it.

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

#readingyear2025 #fantasy #favorites #italian

by Stephen King (1984)

2024 reads, 4/22

“Everything goes away, Jack Sawyer, like the moon. Everything comes back, like the moon.”

It may seem odd to spend over 600 pages on a book that was only three stars (maybe closer to a 3.5), but to be honest, this was a solid 4-star book until the last quarter or so. Overall, this was a good nighttime read: just a fantasy adventure of 12-year-old Jack Sawyer crossing the United States to get to the mysterious Talisman in order to save his mother. While there were monsters and horrors along the way, The Talisman was more adventure, and I guess I had expected an equal amount of each.

The text could feel a bit disjointed at times, likely due to the fact the there were two authors who wrote this (having read some Stephen King before, this didn’t really feel 100% like him). But honestly, you could read much worse, and this book does not deter me from wanting to read the sequel, Black House. Although I think my next few King books will be more focused on horror. Maybe Misery...

#readingyear2024 #spooky #audiobook #fantasy

by Bora Chung (2017)

2023 reads, 4/12:

“So she kept watching TV, trying to empty her heart and mind as she gazed upon the meaningless progression of scenes on the screen. But the well of thought taps a deep spring, and no matter how much she tried to bail them out, her thoughts kept overflowing the brim…”

This horror-ish short story collection was a wild trip. I say “horror-ish” because there’s a little bit of everything in here – fantasy, science fiction, body horror, even drama, but these stories all share the common thread of surrealism. For example, characters might not respond how we would expect them to in certain situations, which admittedly can be a little disorienting at first. But once you accept that and embrace the absurdity, it becomes less disorienting – and I ended up really liking this aspect of the book (and Chung’s writing in general).

My favorites were probably the title story, 'Cursed Bunny,' and 'The Frozen Finger.' The former is a dark spin on the classic fairy-tale genre (but I guess considering that Grimms’ Fairy Tales was originally dark, this is more of a return to form), while the latter is a surreal trip where our we are as blind as the main character, trying to figure out the circumstances surrounding a mysterious car crash. 'Ruler of the Winds and Sands' is also a highlight, exploring the mythical desert world of kings, gods, and greed.

If any of these stories sound intriguing to you, I highly recommend this short story collection!

#readingyear2023 #fantasy #scifi #shortstories #spooky

by Italo Calvino (1972)

2023 reads, 1/12:

“I shall begin by asking you about a city of stairs, exposed to the sirocco, on a half-moon bay. Now I shall list some of the wonders it contains: a glass tank high as a cathedral so people can follow the swimming and flying of the swallow fish and draw auguries from them; a palm tree which plays the harp with its fronds in the wind; a square with a horseshoe marble table around it, a marble tablecloth, set with foods and beverages also of marble.”

Magical realism abounds in this 1972 novel (collection?) from Italo Calvino, an author that has been on my radar for a long time. These are not short stories, but rather a collection of descriptions of imaginary cities that explorer Marco Polo is describing to the emperor Kublai Khan. Although they do not speak the same language, this is a nonissue, because Marco Polo uses dances, objects, and visualizations to describe the cities to Khan. Their relationship (which we learn more about during the interludes) is one based off of understanding one another with unspoken words.

But to us readers, however, Calvino utilizes the perfect mix of vivid imagery (to describe the physical features of cities) and storytelling of the people, spirits, and culture that make up these cities. To me, this is a master craft on visualization, and I cannot recommend it enough – 2023 is starting off strong.

“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”

BONUS: some of my favorite cities include (and this list does not give any justice to the descriptions in the book):

• Zaira (Cities and Memory 3), a city that does not measure physical space, but “relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past”
• Despina (Cities and Desire 3), a city which can be reached by either ocean or desert, and depending on where you enter, you always desire the other side (a perfect metaphor for ‘the grass is always greener’)
• Euphemia (Trading Cities 1), a city which sets up a trading bazaar to not only trade wares, but memories of each other’s lives
• Adelma (Cities and The Dead 2), a city where everyone you meet resembles someone that you knew before they died

#readingyear2023 #fantasy #favorites #italian

by Erin Morgenstern (2011)

This is one of the first fantasy books I’ve ever read (I again apologize to Rachel for having never read Harry Potter – I promise I’ll get to it), and I think it did a great job at some things, and an okay job at others.

I’ll start by saying that this book absolutely ruined circuses for me, due to Morgenstern's incredible scene-setting talent. If I go to a circus and it’s not as she describes it in this book, then I don’t even want to go. The scenery and backdrop was set perfectly. The descriptions as the characters were walking through the circus touched upon all five senses, from the extravagant visuals to the wafting smells of circus fare that the characters would eat. Not to mention, the whole process of setting up the circus in the first part of the book was fascinating.

But while Morgenstern’s writing provided an excellent background for a story to take place, the plot’s timing felt a bit off. The beginning was extremely gradual, which might have been okay, but then the end felt a bit rushed. That being said, don’t let this review deter you from picking up this absolutely charming novel.

#readingyear2021 #physicallyowned #fantasy