Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories | 
pickShowcases a creative and impactful writing talent across a broad spectrum of tone within sci fi and fantasy, contemporary (?) genres.Only the first, eponymous story, feels like the CatNet duology. After that, I appreciate Kritzer's writing but it's a heck of a tone shift. Despite the adorable title, I wouldn't say that age demographic for this collection is YA. More about each story individually in comments below:
How to discourage nosiness...🙃
Oh Big Pharma's getting a cameo too! 💅
Henceforth I will be referring to personal moral code as my 'ethical flow chart'. 👍🏻
What are your favorite short story and/or essay collections? I'm quarantining and in need of recs ✨️
books i finished in november 2021 📚
no real duds this month but my favorite was cat pictures please 🐱
This story ("So Much Cooking") was published in 2017 but hits too close to now, eh? ?
pickIn researching Naomi Kritzer, who was just nominated for a Hugo award for Little Free Library, I saw that she won one in 2016 with Cat Pictures Please, a fun short story about a benevolent A.I. who tries to use your online information to improve your life. Available for free in text and audio at the link.
clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_15/
Pictured: my Black Jack, in hopes of appeasing our digital overlords.
pickThis is such a great short story collection! I think I pretty much loved or strongly liked every story. Naomi has a great imagination and I will be seeking out more of her work (hopefully there is some). I highly recommend this one. 😍
I‘m offering up my fave pic of my two kittehs to the possibly sentient yet benevolent AI that may exist so it can help fix up my life in subtle ways. 😄
From 'Bits' in the tagged book. The narrator is an employee at a sex toy company making prosthetics for human-alien couples. A hilarious read!
pickI had to revisit Cat Pictures Please and ended up devouring and absolutely loving the entire collection. The last story where a food blogger basically blogs through a global pandemic in quarantine is especially timely...
My favorite story may have been In the Witch's Garden, a SF retelling of The Snow Queen.
First #libraryhaul of 2019.
Three of these (the standing books) were cases of #coverlove and I‘m hopeful the contents meet the hopes their covers set 😄
I‘ve set my #mttbr sights on Olympus again - and I‘m adding in a book buying ban on myself until I‘ve reached 25% of that goal. So I foresee lots of library trips for impulse grabs in my near future 😂
pickHopeful and rough, sometimes heartbreaking, often abrupt. Definitely a pick. I enjoyed all of these stories, and loved several... but I gripe about five of the stories being reprints from previous collections I already own.
....I am intrigued by your substitution, story.
Story seventeen, "So Much Cooking."
Oh, I must read more by this author.
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-thing-about-ghost-stories/
#notthetaggedbook #shortwork #stillapick
I rushed home after work & tore open my #shortstoryswap from @ness. Tucked inside was the collection “Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories” by Naomi Kritzer & an enamel “Book Nerd” pin. I‘m excited about the book! Anything reviewed positively by Kelly Barnhill is cool by me! 🙌🏻
Since I have no cat pictures of my own, please enjoy a few of my friend Dave‘s cats, Henry (named after Henry David Thoreau) & Yoko (on Instagram as @ henry_yoko).😻
Ace of Spades - what does it mean to truly live your life, if you were offered a different future , would you change your decisions, your goals, your dreams?
Wind - Fantasy/fairytale/folk lore - again unexpected, but quite enjoyed it
14mo
Blessing Creek - What it can do to people raised under repressive traditions, how racism/xenophobia twists people to do things they might not otherwise consider, addresses the destruction and displacement of indigenous peoples by white 'settlers' of the Western 'frontier'.
14mo
Artifice - The kind of sad robot story I'm used to seeing in modern sci-fi, I'm glad it's not the only kind out there, even if it makes its points well. 14mo
The Good Son - My personal synopsis would be: 'what if the Fae/Fey were not canonically assholes?' , a few jabs at US health care system as it exists, what true love and commitment looks like in the face of illness, mortality 14mo
Comrade Grandmother - Not one for Russian nationalism or war stories, myself, but the idea of Bab Yaga from folklore shaping pivotal WW2 battles with other mythical figures, and dropping by a combat zone to chat with an incredibly brave young woman is honestly more palatable than the truth of warfare 14mo
Bits - Somehow wholesome and a jaw dropper, the author's note gave me a giggle
Honest Man - Going to stay with me for a long time, because I had an uncanny sense of deja vu the whole time I was reading it, and the timing of its original publication makes it incredibly unlikely I would have read it previously 😨 14mo
⚠️ [Overall] Descriptions of WW2 anti-semitic genocide
Three different stories set in the time of world war two, but it's obvious from the start, so easy to skip if that's not your bag 14mo
I rely on library loan periods to access books and the pressure to read a book within a certain time period is exacerbated by unmodifiable interlibrary loan due dates.
There's such a difference in tone from story to story in a short story collection, but also, I feel that authors pull their punches less when the narrative arc is short. You may have several hard hitting tales in a row, whereas a novel (not in the thriller/horror genre) would ease up in the course of the narrative.
While reading a short story made to be impactful, brief or even not completely satisfying in ending every once in a while, spaced out, is reasonable for my personal reader temperament, trying to steadily work my way through a variable collection, as I would with the chapters in a linear volume, feels like it requires more energy/effort/attention. Not an experience I'm likely to repeat frequently. 14mo