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Neil Josten remains the king of the one liner he is untouchable

first re-read in ten years just to feel something!!!

Blood Moon, 4.5 ⭐ Star Wars take on mind manipulation taking over a crew and turning friend against friend until only one is left....mixed with a little werewolf horror. Definitely felt like the type of scary tale you tell around a campfire.

The Eyrie is one of my favorite castles in ASOIAF, and I enjoyed learning more about the Vale and the Arryns. The sneaky Nettles mention was also very cool and I would love to see more of her one day.

The Gilded Cage, 5 ⭐: Mann follows up his introduction of Darth Caldoth from Myths & Fables with another magically sinister short story focusing on the Sith Lord - this time depicting a mind bending encounter with the Nightsisters of Dathomir. Needless to say I absolutely loved the characterizations here and the eeriness of the dark side of the Force. Mann's writing is a true gem in the Star Wars universe.

I return after months of not reading only to find Ser Elmo and his son Ser Kermit waiting for me...stop playing with me

“But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”

It’s really funny in a way I wasn’t expecting

These characters are everything to me it hurts so good

Am I reading a book or undergoing a humiliation ritual because my body cannot tell the difference

This is frying my brain

16/17 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: The titular story in this collection really felt like the culmination of all the ideas from the first 15 stories…meaning we don’t know what we’re talking about when we talk about love, just that we think we do and we think we don’t, and all we can really do is exist in the present moment.

15/17 Everything Stuck to Him: I would love to hear theories on whether this strangely (for this collection) optimistic story is one that really happened, or one that the narrator wishes happened

14/17 Popular Mechanics: Incredibly short but emotionally raw, emphasized in a new style so far in this collection - the missing quotation marks, making this dire moment feel surreal and terrifying yet distant.

13/17 The Calm: I like how this was framed, a story inside a story, about how men in different generations relate to one another - and how you can be intimate with a man in different ways, through softness and through violence.

12/17 A Serious Talk: more connections here about a man equating ownership of a house to ownership of a relationship

11/17 The Third Thing That Killed My Father Off: I struggled with this one admittedly, and it is the longest story so far. I felt a real Grapes of Wrath vibe from this one, and the line about the body (also the crimes done by and to it) being under the surface, and for a longer time than we thought, was brilliant.

10/17 So Much Water So Close To Home: Another story featuring serial killers/murder, but really I couldn’t help but view this story as an allegory for how white men in our society aren’t pressed into acts of urgency on the behalf of others, and how white women can be complacent in that, even when they are the victims as well.

9/17 After the Denim: These stories about looking at destructive behavior in a young couple and seeing a past version of yourself are my favorites of Carver’s, especially after reading his history. I can see the dedication for the collection shine through for this particular story.

8/17 Tell the Women We’re Going: Super dark insight into the relationships that serial killer types build with each other and with others, framed by societal expectations and twisted survival skills.

7/17 The Bath: I really appreciate how Carver has two characters who are depicted according to what role their emotions are leaning toward: parent, spouse, or person. The ambiguous ending was also painful but fitting for this type of story

6/17 Sacks: This story makes you realize that most affairs are mundane and repetitive and not that different from each other…except to the people experiencing the act and the fallout.

5/17 I Could See the Smallest Things: My favorite of the short stories so far, I love how descriptive Carver is about the moon and how it shines over a paused suburban life - a moment of quiet rebellion in doing something outside of the expected routine of your life, especially as a woman.

4/17 Gazebo: I love how a hotel can serve as a metaphor for outside forces pushing in on a relationship, and how an idealized structure like a gazebo feels more stable than a place people need (a hotel). Realizing that starting new can happen at any time in your life, especially from something bad you’ve lived though or done, can feel freeing but empty

3/17 Mr. Coffee and Mr. Fixit: A lot of dialogue in this one but I keep getting confused on who is speaking and when - but maybe the comparison of the marriages, the narrator’s own and his parents - are meant to be confused because the follow similar patterns

2/17 Viewfinder: Starting to sense a theme here of being physically trapped in suburbia and emotionally trapped with grief and abandonment. Interesting metaphors here of what it means to hold onto something with what you have, with what you’ve been dealt with, worse or better than others

1/17 Why Don't You Dance: Interesting display of perspectives of two people (the couple almost acting as an individual while the older man acts as one half of a couple) who feel for one brief moment as if they have swapped trajectories, looking into the experience they are missing but not quite being able to grasp it.