I loved Arrival. And that love led me to read Ted Chiang's first book of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others (2002), and then to seek out all of the other short stories he had published to date. Which didn't take long...there were only seven of them as of 2015.
And then I waited.
It took awhile...2.67 years or so...but finally I heard that he had a new book coming out. I was pretty excited. But I did the responsible thing and put in a request for it via the free public library. Got on before the book had even been released, so I was pretty high on the list from the get-go, and I'm 2 of 3 even as we speak. (Waitaminute...there are only 3 people waiting for this book in all of Louisville? What the fuck?)
But even that wasn't good enough, so I've been checking out the shelves of Barnes & Noble whenever I went in. And today I found a copy of Exhalation on the shelves. I immediately flipped to the copyright page to see what I could see. And...hmmm. I knew a couple of the titles from my post-first book collection readings. And some of the others seemed familiar, too. I flipped to the last section of the book wherein Chiang had written some comments on the stories, and as I read I realized that I had read almost ALL of these stories. In fact of
,
only the last two stories were new to me. Which is not nothing. I mean, they're pretty long...33 + 71 = 104 pages is nothing to sneeze at...but I have to admit that I was kind of glad that I hadn't bought it. I mean, I do love Ted, but $17.07 / $13.99 (Amazon's Print / Kindle prices) is pretty steep for 104 pages.
So.
I'm still looking forward to reading those two stories, for sure. And I'll probably re-read the other stories, too, since it has been awhile, and I do remember liking most of them quite a bit. But I didn't sit there in Barnes & Noble to read them. I think I can wait until the library book comes through.
Sigh.
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