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This is mine:

- Summae Technologiae by Stanislaw Lem

- The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem (reread)

- Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

- The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

- The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

- Embassytown by China Mieville

- The Vegetarian by Han Kang

- Perchance to Dream (stories) by Charles Beaumont

- Highrise by J.G. Ballard

- In a Glass Darkly and Other Stories by Sheridan Le Fanu

- The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling (checkout my openly annotatable edition https://hc.selectedintelligence.com)

- All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan

- New American Stories edited by Ben Marcus

- This is The Way by Gavin Corbett

It's been a very fictional year. I guess I wasn't enjoying reality enough to read about it.




How did you like 'New American Stories'?


Well I know very little about contemporary American fiction so it was all pretty new to me.

NoViolet Bulawayo was my favourite. Anthony Doerr, Rebecca Lee and Robert Coover I liked. George Saunders made me laugh though I didn't think the story was exceptional. I remember really not liking Sam Lipsyte but everybody I spoke to said I was being unfair.

I'd never read any Don Delillo and I know I'll have nothing but grief for saying so: I thought it felt like something dust-covered from the 80s to me. Like a story set in a world of filofaxes. And not in a good way.

I didn't feel strongly enough about the rest I guess to comment. So a pretty mixed bag - but you know that's contemporary for you...time hasn't sifted the work, so it is bound to be patchy.




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