I was going through Shada at a very leisurely pace. I was about three-quarters done with it on April 3. That's when I got a notice about needing to return Exhalation, a collection of short stories by Ted Chiang, which I had checked out at the same time. It was due on April 6. I liked Arrival but hadn't read anything else by this guy, but I've had good experiences with short stories before. I considered returning it unread, but decided to see how much I could complete, and in the end I finished it in the laundromat Saturday. Cool.
The guy deserves his reputation. Every story was very different from each other, and from almost anything else I had read. Except where the similarities were clearly deliberate, like the time travel story in the style of 1001 Arabian Nights. If I had to pick my favorite story in the book, it would probably be "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom." If I had to pick the best, it might be "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," but that's a little too depressing to call my favorite.
I'm planning to get some reading done during our upcoming trip. At a bookstore a few day ago on a whim I bought Meddling Kids, which seems to be a Scooby Doo deconstruction/Lovecraft mashup. I'm planning to grab at least one book of the shelf I haven't read before, just to pass the time while traveling and hopefully add another to the pile that can be decluttered.
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