It is becoming a regular trend for bloggers and amateur writers to come together and put up a collection of small stories. I myself have been part of three such projects and looking to be part of couple of more such projects in the coming year. The stories are either written by pre-selected set of authors or outcome of open contests. Big publishing houses generally tend to go for contests while self-published books tend to be a project by a set of authors working together. Startup publishing houses go both ways. In terms of genres and themes, big publishing houses seem risk averse and opt only for romance. Startup publishing houses on the other hand seem open to experiment. This particular anthology I write about - ‘Marijuana Diaries’ is one such experiment by Fablery. They have already brought out a couple of anthologies based on contests organized at their site. In this one, the editor seems to have picked a set of authors and asked them to write. For generic themes like romance, contests work best. However for a theme like addiction, I feel this idea of choosing authors and asking them to write on different aspects of the theme ensures a broader coverage.
The addictions covered here are those of sex, drugs, food, alcohol, work, television, romance, hobbies and social media. Each story deals with how the addiction impacts the life of the protagonist and the people around them. While in some stories the addiction is central to the story, in others it happens to be peripheral. In a theme based anthology I would have preferred every story to have addiction as the central theme. Also from a broader coverage perspective addiction to relationships, revenge, religion, ideologies and ambitions are ones that were prominent by their absence.
As far as the title goes, it is appropriate and kind of conveys the theme. But when I browse the internet I find a more famous book already existing with this title. So this might cause the book to lose out on internet searches – not sure how much that medium contributes to book sales. The cover image is simple and elegant but not sure if it conveys clearly the theme of the book or in some way piques the curiosity of readers. There is a line drawing of contours of a woman who is smoking with the names of the authors floating all around her. To me, it conveys a picture of an addicted woman. Most of the authors are women and most of the protagonists in the stories are women as well. But there are exceptions to both – we have two stories by men and a story by a woman author with a male protagonist as well.
Coming to the stories, they are mostly character based and closer to literary fiction as they focus on psyche exploration. All the stories are written reasonably well and I must congratulate all the authors for the commendable effort on their part. However I cannot say any of the stories really left a strong impact on me as such. But that could also be due to the fact that I possibly am not the intended audience for this book. Some reviewers can really keep aside their genre preferences and judge stories purely on merit. Unfortunately I am not one of those. I am a hardcore speculative fiction buff and in terms of serious reading as well, attracted more to the abstract and conceptual. So simple stories grounded in realism are hardly likely to cut much ice with me. I was aware of this even as I picked up this book and probably would not have but for the fact that I count many of the authors included in this anthology among my friends.
On a closing note, I must mention I found the idea of a diary on Marijuana addiction mentioned in the first story intriguing and set the right tone for this book.
The addictions covered here are those of sex, drugs, food, alcohol, work, television, romance, hobbies and social media. Each story deals with how the addiction impacts the life of the protagonist and the people around them. While in some stories the addiction is central to the story, in others it happens to be peripheral. In a theme based anthology I would have preferred every story to have addiction as the central theme. Also from a broader coverage perspective addiction to relationships, revenge, religion, ideologies and ambitions are ones that were prominent by their absence.
As far as the title goes, it is appropriate and kind of conveys the theme. But when I browse the internet I find a more famous book already existing with this title. So this might cause the book to lose out on internet searches – not sure how much that medium contributes to book sales. The cover image is simple and elegant but not sure if it conveys clearly the theme of the book or in some way piques the curiosity of readers. There is a line drawing of contours of a woman who is smoking with the names of the authors floating all around her. To me, it conveys a picture of an addicted woman. Most of the authors are women and most of the protagonists in the stories are women as well. But there are exceptions to both – we have two stories by men and a story by a woman author with a male protagonist as well.
Coming to the stories, they are mostly character based and closer to literary fiction as they focus on psyche exploration. All the stories are written reasonably well and I must congratulate all the authors for the commendable effort on their part. However I cannot say any of the stories really left a strong impact on me as such. But that could also be due to the fact that I possibly am not the intended audience for this book. Some reviewers can really keep aside their genre preferences and judge stories purely on merit. Unfortunately I am not one of those. I am a hardcore speculative fiction buff and in terms of serious reading as well, attracted more to the abstract and conceptual. So simple stories grounded in realism are hardly likely to cut much ice with me. I was aware of this even as I picked up this book and probably would not have but for the fact that I count many of the authors included in this anthology among my friends.
On a closing note, I must mention I found the idea of a diary on Marijuana addiction mentioned in the first story intriguing and set the right tone for this book.
6 comments:
What can I say? I am for the first time on the other side of the fence LF. :D Thank you so much for taking the time. I know how busy you are. I'm sorry that not one story made an impct on you but most of them were women oriented. But I am glad you liked some thing in the book. Wishing you all the best for you upcoming novels. :)
Thanks for taking the time out to review.
Rubina - always happy to take time to take time out for friends. You don't have to be sorry - no book is going to be liked by everyone as different people have different tastes. Guess I am too much into fantasy to really like anything else. Even feminist Fanasy by the likes of Lynn Flewelling and Urusula Leguinn or Tamora Pierce I am pretty fine with as long as it is fantasy.
Any time, Ahana.
Hmm - THAT is what I find missing in most reviewers. This realization that there is a difference between not liking a book because you like reading a different type of writing and not liking a book because it is not well enough written even for the genre. AND the honesty to tell both the authors and the readers about the biases that lie behind the review. It tells the author whether the story has not struck a chord with you because you do not prefer the author to tell a different sort of story OR because the author has failed to tell the story that SHE wanted to say well enough. It also tells the reader that your not liking a book arises out of your own tastes and not any inherent flaw in the book. THAT lack of hubris - that if you do not like a type of story, the world ought not to like it - is increasingly rare these days.
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