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Archive for the ‘Talking animals’ Category

Robin Sloan–Moonbound (2012)

Posted in Beavers, Robin Sloan, Robots, Scholarship, Talking animals, Technology, The Future, The Moon, The White Stripes, Wizards on February 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 1, 2025] Moonbound

Back in 2012 I read Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and really loved it.

Then I pretty much forgot about him until this past year’s Advent Calendar collection of short stories.  He had a story “In the Stacks” that was about libraries and was touching and sweet, but also quite cool.  And I saw that he had written a new book, Moonbound.

My wife also heard about it and she checked out out, but I grabbed it first and started to read it.

And boy it just took me forever to get through it.  I don’t know what it was about this book (which has many many great reviews), but everything about the story felt really flat to me.  It felt really long (400 pages) and felt like there was no sense of urgency.

It was also set in the very distant future (13,000 years from now), when a [human?] species called the Anth were all but extinct .  One of the problems for me was that there was no really compelling explanation for the backstory. (more…)

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Saki–“Tobermory” (Myanmar) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #13] (1912)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Burma, Canadian Content, Cats, Christmas, Funny (ha ha), Hingston & Olsen, Myanmar, Short Story, Supernatural, Surreal, Talking animals, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 13, 2021] “Tobermory”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Saki was the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro, a British author born in Myanmar (then British Burma).  He loved skewering the British upper class.

This story is hilarious.

An upper class couple is throwing a party and they have invited a host of boorish people.  They’ve also invited Mr. Cornelius Appin, a “clever” man with a vague reputation.

It soon came out that Appin discovered a means for instructing animals in the art of human speech.  The room is incredulous, until he says that his first subject was the hosts’ own cat Tobermory. (more…)

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