After loving Pretty Monsters Stories, I set out to read whatever I could find from Kelly Link. I did enjoy many of the short stories in this collection Magic for Beginners, but in some of the stories, the delightfully strange and imaginative narration became too dreamlike in that it never seemed to move forward.

For instance, I loved the premise of "Stone Animals." I was excited about the characters, the house, and the rabbits, just about everything, but every day, it just kept being the same characters, the same house, the same rabbits, and it never progressed or changed. It seemed like a very, very long writing exercise in strange details. "The Hortlak" dragged similarly for me. I imagine it is me not "getting it," which makes me sad, because I enjoy Kelly Link's mind so much. I really liked "Catskin," "Some Zombie Contingency Plans," and "Lull," but I think my favorites were still the two that were included in Pretty Monsters as well. (I love "The Library" so much I started reading aloud to John on a car trip just to share it.)