120 books

#34 of 2012: Hint Fiction edited by Robert Swartwood

“Less is more” ~gimmicks in books usually get me (like David Levithan’s Lover’s Dictionary but I guess he’s an exception ‘cause I LOVE HI…S WORKS) but this one failed its aim. For an eye-catching-ly designed book, this one did not have so many heart-tugging stories to tell. And I don’t mean heart-tugging in that cray-cray sense alone, but in a WHOA THESE STORIES ARE PIERCING THROUGH MY HEART, BRAIN AND SOUL kind of thing, too. I knew practically nobody from the roster of contributors so I had no one’s writing to look forward, too, and it turned eventually that I could have just passed by this book and I wouldn’t be missing something - anything - in my life. Unfortunately (or fortunately, since we all learn from our mistakes), I gave it a chance and here I am, wanting my 20 minutes back. But there were still a couple of Yay!s:

Yay!s
-Polygamy by David Joseph

I miss her more than the others.
-Mein Fuhrer by David Joseph

By now I’ve burned pages more than I’ve read.
-Pregnancy Kit by Jennifer Haddock

A drop of pee. An unanswered prayer. The second pink line draws one childhood to an end as another begins.

Boo!s
-Lacked more engaging stories. Ernest Hemingway’s infamous six-word stories are way more fun.
-That reminds me, it also lacked funny/light/happy stories, as if life were only full of the BOOOHOOOOHOOO and the CREEPS

#27 of 2012: You Better Not Cry by Augusten Burroughs

I would have to put the blame on the fact that I wasn’t feeling too Chrismast-y when I read this book. I usually enjoy Augusten Burroughs but this time, his antics fell a bit flat on me. It’s supposedly a short read, but I think I spent twice the amount of time on it than I should have. The other characters in the story, aka his family, seemed unfamiliar to me. Somehow like long-lost relatives, whom I supposed to be happy to meet but REALLY DON’T. Even Augusten himself sounded unfunny in some of his stories. I wish I could give this another chance, preferably during the Jesus season.

Yay!s
-It’s an anthology! Therefore you can skip stories that don’t seem interesting enough for you and get back to them when you’re extremely bored and have nothing to do.
-One of the stories, You Better Not Cry (yes, the same title of the book), tells the story of Augusten being confused on whether Jesus was Santa and vice versa. Not overly hilarious, but still can be funny.

Boo!
-In connection to one of the Yay!s, there ARE stories that you’d very much like to skip.