Is This Dead Yet?

Well, I always read books, and then I have Opinions about them, and the every so often I think my boyfriend gets sick of hearing them (and I know my journal complains about it all the time), so I thought I'd try putting my thoughts here.

I suppose I could stick them in reviews, but I feel that reviews should be Useful and Informative, and also somewhat Unbiased...very few of which are things I can do regularly. But not, like, unbiased, since reviews are supposed to be your opinion....okay, look, I have no idea where I was going with that. Either you understand and you'll stay, or you don't and you'll leave anyway, so do you thing.

So, let's get this party started:

Last week I read Rootabaga Stories. Well, I read some of it.

It's quintessential American fairy tales in the tradition of whimsical American folk-lore stories. Which is a bit hard to explain.

A while back I read or heard something that explained that American folk-tales--not the stuff from the Native American Indians--are unique in that they have something strange happen in them, and then in the end everything is the same as in the beginning.

It's like speculative fiction stretched to the limits and left to hang plotlessly.

Rutabaga Stories are not specifically folk-lore (you can track them to one author), but they seem to be pretty popular among certain people, and I'd speculate that it's because they are the same sort of weird speculative insanity as our actual folk-lore.

In this volume, the author takes that whimsical wired-shit approach to the limits of their zigzag railroad with the city on a cream puff at the end of it.

If whimsical is your thing, it's great. Unfortunately, whimsical doesn't seem to be my thing, at least not here, so I'm going to pass on the rest of the book.