Beginning to catch up on the reading front a little, although I’m still busy with too many other things to make much headway on the novel pile (and, to be frank, August is not looking promising on that front either. Ah, well).
Anyway – for a bit of light relief I went with Terry Pratchett’s Snuff. As noted previously I always enjoy Pratchett, but for some reason this time round the story failed to grab me. Might have been me, but for a book that is dealing with what appears to be the closing chapters of the Vimes stories, it felt inconsequential.
Shorts were better this month. I enjoyed Tim Lees’ The Counterweight in Black Static 29, mostly for taking me back to the kind of spare, downbeat slipstream ideas that TTA Press built their name on back in the day. Got me proper nostalgic, so it did.
The other story I enjoyed was Jennifer Egan’s Black Box, which was the first story under discussion in David Hebblethwaite’s Sunday Story Society reading circle. You can read what we thought of the story in the comments, but if you’re interested in genuinely interesting, varied and thought provoking short fiction and want to join in the discussion, get on over there, read the stories and jump in. David’s assembled an eclectic list for the upcoming weeks that I’m really looking forward to reading.
ayeahmur 
Neil, thanks for the tip about the Egan short story, I thought her novel “A Visit from the Goon Squad” was one of the best things I had recently, slightly science fictional at the end, hilarious in places and where else to you get a chapter told in graph form!