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“Pretend that you have free will.”

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

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If you love science fiction and want something really different, this might be the best thing you read all year. Exhalation is a series of science fiction short stories with inspirations ranging from ancient Arab storytelling traditions to Monty Python sketches. I know this because Chiang provides a brief commentary at the end of many of the stories as to how it came about. As you might imagine, this diversity of inspirations creates an enormous variety in the stories. You might follow a portal to […]

Return from Vacation – Various books!

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

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I’ve just returned from our family vacation – where me, my husband and daughter caught Covid (there’s not many great times to catch Covid, but catching it while staying with your extended family in a vacation rental is definitely a supremely shitty time to catch Covid). My brain still feels a bit foggy, but as I return I’m excited to read all the posts about CBR Bingo. I am going to post my reviews from vacation reads (all completed after July 15) and claim their […]

Exhalation

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

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I am a big Ted Chiang fan, and this collection did not disappoint.  I found it a bit more uneven than Stories of Your Life and Others, but the good ones are really good.  I don’t want to talk about each story, but I do want to talk about my three favorites! The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate: Time travel, historical Middle East setting, alchemy?  Sign me up.  This was a really heartfelt story that hit all the right notes for me.  I love how […]

It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

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Even if you haven’t ready any of Ted Chiang’s stories, you may already be familiar with his Nebula and Hugo Award-winning work “Story of Your Life,” which was adapted into the Academy Award-nominated film Arrival. I haven’t read that story (yet), but the concepts in the film intrigued me enough that when I heard about this new collection, I was eager to read it. If you have seen Arrival, you won’t be surprised that Chiang’s writing continues to explore ideas about time, free will, responsibility, and […]

Breathing in a collection of sci-fi short stories by a master

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

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Exhalation: Stories is a collection of short sci-fi stories written by Ted Chiang. Below is a short review of each story but over-all, Exhalation: Stories made me think. Collectively, each story forced upon a small crisis of identity in how I relate to technology in my own world, and I am a more self-aware person for it. Chiang created a collection of stories that all meshes together. No story feels out of place or like an intruder. “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate”: An interesting and […]

“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed”

Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang

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To borrow from 30 Rock, I loved Arrival, as all right thinking people did, because I have two ears and a heart, don’t I? I had read the story that gives this collection its title in some science fiction best of collection shortly after its publication (it will drive me absolutely crazy that I can’t find where I initially read it to get an exact date, but it was at least ten years ago), and weirdly, about ten seconds into the movie before much happens, […]



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