Read-Along with Risa!

Thanks to everyone for the amazing suggestions for a 6th “bonus” bookish activity challenge for 2024! I ultimately decided to go with a co-challenge, where you get to share in the activity with me.* We are going to read a book together over the course of the next 10 months!

Respecting that everyone has different and differently challenging schedules, reading tastes, and access to books, I settled on the short story collection “Unnatural Creatures: Stories Selected by Neil Gaiman”. I chose this book because:

1. Although Gaiman selected the stories, he only authors one of them, so if you happen to hate him (wait, WHAT????), then you are only subjected to one story by him, which you can always skip. Mind you, I would assume his tastes run through the rest of the book.
2. Short stories means you can miss some of the reading, and still be able to participate fully in any discussions for stories that you did read.
3. The short stories themselves appear on first glance to really be short. The longest seems to be one at around 80 pages, and the shortest is around 12. Most are in the neighbourhood of 25.
4. There are 16 stories in all, which means we can read 2 per month and wrap up at the end of October with 2 months to spare.

I have no idea what the stories are about, but suspect a healthy does of the magical and the fantastical, being selected by Gaiman and all. This is an older book (2013) so copies may potentially be easier to come by, both in stores and in libraries. I’ve included some links to sources below. The plan is for us to read 2 stories per month, starting in March. I’ll create a post each month to kick it off, listing the two stories that are that month’s focus. At the end of the month, everyone can post their thoughts (good and bad) in the comments. I hope you’ll consider participating!

One final point, this may be a book aimed at younger readers, just so that you’re prepared for the reading level being potentially extremely easy 🙂 An interesting tidbit that I came across while looking for sources of the book: “Sales of Unnatural Creatures benefit 826DC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students in their creative and expository writing, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.” I’m curious if this still applies to sales a decade later?

Amazon (paperback $13.61 and kindle $11.99)

Indigo (paperback $13.61 and kindle $11.99 – same price fixing as Amazon, surprise surprise)

Thriftbooks (paperback $6.39 – $14.69)

Abebooks (price = ??? TBH I’m not a fan of Abebooks anymore, they hide a lot of costs in currency conversion and shipping that did not used to be the case)

*other suggestions have not been discarded, merely postponed for possible future use