Impossible Things Book

`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'

If there is a raison d'être for genre fiction, it is summarized in the above quote from Through the Looking Glass. But the book "Impossible Things" also rekindles my anger at the fact that things people like Connie Willis write is even classified as anything other than fiction and so shelved away from the areas where "normal" people browse for books. I think Neil Gaiman put it best (summarizing yet other people)

"I sometimes really wish that all fiction books of all genres for any people over the age of about 12 were simply filed alphabetically by author, because as Patrick Nielsen Hayden once pointed out to me, shelving by genre simply tells people the places in a bookshop that they don't have to go. And Sturgeon's Law suggests that they'll be missing out on some good stuff that's shelved in those places."

But, I really haven't told you anything about the book. It is a collection of short stories, some involving the future, some involving aliens, all involving characters trying to deal with their lives. Connie Willis has this skill in conveying empathy that makes you want to weep for dogs in "The Last Winnebago", feel guilt in "Jack", and wish Cary Grant could have filmed "Spice Pogrom".

I'm three books into reading Connie Willis, and while this collection is the most uneven thing I've read yet, I'm still enamored with her wit, humor, and writing.