Status Updates From The Penguin Book of the Int...

Not to be an obnoxious pedant but why is American-born, American-educated, American-scifi-inspired, American-media-renowned and English-language author Ted Chiang in this collection?

i can already tell this is going to take me so long to get through but wow im excited !!!

The Flower Garden
- One of my favorite genres of short story: a character with a life inside their head and so much unsaid narration confronts their reality and is met with a logical extreme to solve their dilemma.
- Lovely characterization that draws you in immediately.
- In the same category of weird realism that Ling Ma's Bliss Montage encompasses
- Mieko Kawakami does it again!

One Minus One
- Thematically, like Scott Street by Phoebe Bridgers x Fourth of July by Sufjan Stevens :')

My Sad Dead
- Always so interesting to see how other cultures characterize and commune with their ghosts, and always reminded of the tweet that mused how Central/South Americans are the best at writing magical realism because they don't shy away from said ghosts and all of the ugliness and empathy that comes with having them in our day-to-day lives.

War of the Clowns
- Jester's privilege for chaotic evil

The Illumination of Santiago
- Love how this story is a time capsule of one beautiful moment that is remembered still for its impact generations later with such reverence in which "we began cheating with time".

Apples
- Really enjoyed the way that this story was divided into four parts which so naturally unraveled into each other, like an unbroken apple peel. Each subject unfolded into each other's POV quite nicely.

Super Frog Saves Tokyo by Haruki Murakami
- this was my first intro to Murakami and I want to know what goes on inside his head
- quintessentially Japanese salaryman in the way that ordinary day-to-day happenings are so mundane in a painful way
- hallucinatory frog reads and quotes Joseph Conrad, Hemingway, and Dostoevsky … it would love Bungo Stray Dogs
- fascinatingly odd in a melancholy way