Welcome to the first month of the Nerdy Friends Book Club!
Through popular request and strategic planning around busy schedules, I’ve selected Unnatural Creatures, a book of short stories curated by the great Neil Gaiman! There are 16 stories in all, so we will plan on reading two per month, and discuss them in the comments. I suggest that we aim to read the stories within the first 3 weeks of the month and leave the 4th week for commentary. This is not a hard and fast rule, you decide what works best for you, but be aware that after week 3, spoilers may appear in the comments.
This month features the first two stories in the book, one of which has a non-verbal “Arrival” style title that looks like an audio sound wave, and which we will simply refer to as “Story One”. The second story is titled “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchists Bees”. Authors are not provided in the table of contents, but do get credited at the start of each story. That’s it! Chat with you in 3 weeks!
The first thing that jumped out at me from this book was the dedication, which makes me think of my friend Chrystal not because she’s boring (she isn’t!) but because I think she may actually be a secret agent:
For Bigfoot, for the time travelers, for the pirates, for the robots, for any boring people (who obviously aren’t actually secret agents in boring disguise), for people in space rockets, and for our mothers. ~N.G.
Thanks Risa! Now I am going to have to assume another identity…again!
Got the book. Game on!
This is going to be fun! Looking forward to chatting with Risa and her readers 🙂
Hello my friends! I managed to squeeze in reading the first two short stories. And by “squeeze” I mean I was pleasantly surprised to find the reading time to be about 15-20 minutes which is about how long it takes me to drink a cup of coffee in the morning!
The first story, “–|-||-@—|-|” or “Story One” for simplicity I found to be … cute. Frankly the premise reminded me of Stephen King’s The Shining. The book, not the movie. If you’ve read it, there is a scene where Danny has to run across a lawn covered in hedges pruned into animal shapes. The hedges move whenever he is not looking right at them, and of course it’s not possible to a) run away and look at the hedge and b) look at ALL of the hedges at once. It’s a very creepy scene. (Also in this camp is the Doctor Who episode “Blink”). I guess what I’m saying is it didn’t strike me as overly original. Hence “cute”. I am interested in your thoughts!
The second story, “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, I found fascinating. What an interesting blend of wasp and bee behaviour blended with such fun subjects as colonialism, political ideology, and the exploitation of nature by humans when we find something we can monetize. Well written, and it left me wanting more, just like a human.
They were quick reads, and very different from each other, so a good introduction to the book!
From Neil Gaiman’s intro to the first story, I was expecting more drawing and more scary. I enjoyed the story and the drawings were interesting, but I was not scared. As Risa said, this doesn’t have a patch on the weeping angels from Doctor Who. I never felt that the blob thingy was hunting them (or was even interested in them).
The second story – what a clever way to play with the concepts of colonialism and anarchy. Much more satisfying. I think I’ve learned that I should read the story, then read NG’s intro! Then I won’t be spoiled and can find out his perspective after my own has been shaped a bit.
That is a great suggestion! Skip the NG intros until after reading the story. I will do this as well!