Kelly Link, _Stranger Things Happen_

This is a book of short stories by a relatively new writer whom I've heard highly recommended.

My favorite here is "Shoe and Marriage". It's an oblique concatenation of four tales: a married man (the Cinderella prince, sort of, but he didn't marry Cinderella) still searching for a girl who can wear the shoe, hiring a prostitute to wear it; honeymooners watching a surreal beauty pageant on the hotel TV; the dictator's wife, who lives in the shoe museum and tells about her brutalized life; an engaged couple at a shoe-reading fortune teller. I have no idea what it all means, but it works.

Some other stories I don't see the point and it annoys me. Like, in the story where both protagonists are named "Louise", and one has dated eight cellists. Why the multiplicity? I suppose I'm willing to take it on faith that it's not a gimmick, but that doesn't stop it from reading like one.

Many of these stories are related to fairy tales. "Travels with the Snow Queen" is, among other things, a look at several from the modern woman's point of view. "Flying Lessons" has Aphrodite living as a romance novelist (yeah, yeah, but it's not a bad story actually).

Some people report being terrified by "The Specialist's Hat". It's good, but it doesn't creep me out. I don't find any of these stories creepy.

For me, Link does better at a sort of precise loopiness. The further secret origin of the girl detective:

Some people say that a small child in a grocery store bit her. It was one of those children who are constantly asking their parents why the sky is blue and are there really giant alligators -- formerly the pets of other small children -- living in the sewers of the city and if China is directly below us, could we drill a hole and go right throught the center of the earth and if so would we come up upside-down and so on. This child, radioactive with curiosity, bit the girl detective, and in that instant the girl detective suddenly saw all of these answers, all at once. She was so overcome she had to lie down in the middle of the aisle with the breakfast cereal on one side and the canned tomatoes on the other, and the store manager came over and asked if she was all right? She wasn't all right, but she smiled and let him help her stand up again, and that night she went home and stitched the days of the week on her underwear, so that if she was ever run over by a car, at least it would be perfectly clear when the accident had occurred. She thought this would make her mother happy.

(An intriguing story, but it gets away from me.)

productive day

I didn't get in until after noon, but the flip side is that I got plenty of sleep. Certainly more work got done than yesterday, when I was in my usual mode of getting in by 11 on 6.5 or 7 hours of sleep (which makes me spacy all day). Maybe I should consider just shifting forward to Dee's sleep schedule, if she won't shift back to mine.

So I rewrote the applications and conclusions chapters in light of my advisor's comments, and read and commented on two paper drafts of his. Haven't eaten dinner yet. I think I'll go polish off the chicken/lime chilioid.

another advantage of having enough sleep

is that I can have a beer with dinner without conking out. Wooo.