Probably the most perfect anthology I've ever read. With the exception of one story, I was engaged and excited throughout. I'd already been a fan of Kelly Link's own endeavors prior to discovering LCRW, but that didn't stop me from being blown away by the skill exhibited in this volume. I've since become a subscriber to LCRW (chocolate level), and I have to admit that it really does just keep getting better. That little hand-copied, stapled little pamphlet is my favorite among all of the literar...

I randomly remember just now that I bought this the night before Spanky & Karen's wedding while wandering around Tyson's with Nattie and Georg. Also, I've just turned the book over for the first time, really, and see these notes on the back cover: "HIGH IN FIBER -- rough on your stomach! Keep contents unsettling -- SHAKE WELL. Waste DAYS of VALUABLE time that YOU could spend ONLINE!"My short reaction to the book was "I liked some of the stories, and really disliked others"; Mina's was "I loved s...

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet is one of those rare journals which is always fresh and surprising, and well worth watching. If you like the weird, the original, the speculative, the original, the strange, or even if you simply like good writing, it's worth taking note of. As a result, this is simply a fun anthology of work. Filled with an odd assortment of poetry, fiction, observation, and note, the book is incredibly entertaining. There's little doubt in my mind that any reader will find som...

These are writers who are write fearlessly, unafraid of following a good story wherever it might try to hide. Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet - the magazine itself, that is - was barely more than a decade old when this book was published. That's an eternity, perhaps, for a small-press publication, but it's still a remarkably short time in which to have attracted so many excellent, energetic genre-benders.I recognized many familiar names from other places, like Karen Joy Fowler ("Heartland"), J...

I may have had a different reaction to this collection had I encountered it earlier, but familiar as I am now with the kind of story that might appear in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, this one didn't do it for me. The stories included within (there's a fair amount of poetry, too) are exactly my kind of genre--that difficult-to-label, slipstreamy, edge-of-fantasy stuff I've been drawn to in the past couple of years--but this didn't quite strike me as a best-of, unfortunately. The pieces by a...

Great read. All stories were unique, well-written and flowed well.

This 'best of' volume encompasses the first ten years (1996-2006) of the pioneering 'zine edited by Kelly (MacArthur Genius Grant) Link and her husband, Gavin (Regular Genius) Grant. The 'zine helped to shape and define the term 'slipstream', which contains a lot of bizarre and disjointed elements with a loose narrative structure, mainly intended to give the reader a disquieted but pronounced feeling of cognitive dissonance.And fun. Don't forget the fun.Kelly and Gavin may have grown up on 'Frac...

i am really not that into anthologies most of the time, so i only read the things in here that i immediately was drawn to or seemed like a thing i would like. kelly link's opening story is killer, just like pretty much everything she has ever written, and karen russell's contribution is so beautiful, as well as many others. i am not sure what to rate this, because not reading all of the pieces in here had less to do with them not being good and way more to do with my own lack of endurance and pa...

Fanzines emerged out of the 1930s science-fiction fan culture, eventually propagating among such active fandoms as music, role-playing games, and comics. Zines played a pivotal role in the development of new talent often publishing the best and brightest before they were well-known: Ray Bradbury, Greil Marcus, Robert Crumb, and Bruce Sterling, among others. The advent of the Internet ushered in the webzine, seemingly dooming the traditional zine, but experimental, postmodern science-fiction fanz...

This book holds the contents of a couple of zines created by Kelly Link and her husband. It has short stories, short-shorts, essays, film reviews and poems. There are lots of gems here, and lots that I skipped over. Highlights:Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland - A husband finds a mysterious set of letters in his wife's possessions.Happier Days - A series of high school reunions with a "Happy Days" theme begin to have drastic effects on the participants.Help Wanted - Mer-Girl, Bat Girl and

I returned this book to the library early - oddly, because the stories are so excellent. I had to own it, knowing I'd re-read it many times. In a way, it's a primer for how to write outside the stagnant, boring, patriarchal academic/intellectual elite that infects most published fiction. This is a collection of stories from many authors first published in the literary zine (yes, a real zine that still looks photocopied, although the book isn't) Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, edited by Kelly

Didn't finish. Sadly, I found that off the wall didn't equal well written/ interesting. Worth a try, though.

As a fan of both the short story and of the slightly unusual, I found this book to be delightful. As with any collection, there were a few stories that didn't resonate with me as much as others, but it was well worth the read overall. I have to agree with a number of the other reviewers that "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland" by Sarah Monette was one of the strongest pieces in the work, I think mostly because it was one of the most conventionally told stories and thus, for me, a little bi...

An excellent collection of short stories, essays, and other short writings. As with any collection, I didn't like every story I read, but there was only one story that I almost didn't finish reading. The rest ranged from "good" to "great" to "added to my list of favorites." Standout stories, falling into the great and favorites columns, are Kelly Link's "Travels With The Snow Queen," Nalo Hopkinson's "Tan-Tan and Dry Bone," Philip Raines and Harvey Welles' "The Fishie," Veronica Schanoes' "Serpe...

So I bought this book while I was still working at the Barnes and Noble. One of my friends had labeled it as her staff pick. It has a great cover and fascinating blurbs on the back, intriguing title, sounded like my kind of thing. I read the introduction and the first few stories, but didn't get too drawn in by them, though they were good. So this sat around for quite a while. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was looking for something short and fun to read on a Saturday morning. I unearthed this s...

This is an amazing collection of the best kind of sci fi/fantasy. You see, growing up, I've always loved sci fi and fantasy, but I was always aware that 90% of the genre are total crap. By the time I was 12, I was sick of Prince Hapless going on a quest to prove himself to Lady Bigbreasts, and Princess Too-Many-Letters-in-her-Name proving girls can be magicians, too, not to mention all the robots and evil aliens and Captain Hapless proving himself to Token Female Bigbreasts. But my favorite book...

I definitely recommend that you be in the right mindset for this collection. The zine it's collected from is known for publishing stories that are somewhat out there, and this collection highlights it.It also contains more than just short stories. Movie reviews, articles on whiskey and martinis. Poetry, and even artwork. All in all, it's a collection that you have to be in the mood for.But there are flashes of brilliance. The story based on the fairy tale about the boy with the shard of glass in...

Kelly Link's aesthetic is the best. I love her short stories, and for the most part, I loved the short stories and poems she selected for her zine, and consequently for her anthology. There are some real gems. Jan Lars Jensen's story "Happier Days" is about a Happy Days-themed high school reunion that goes horribly wrong--or right? Don't want to give it away, but I loved that one. Deborah Roggie's "The Mushroom Duchess," also very good--think The Favorite meets Phantom Thread? Only losing a star...

This one, I was not expecting to like. I thought I'd enjoy it, because I like Kelly Link, and a couple of her stories would be in there. But it's an anthology, so it's a crapshoot and what are the odds of most of the stories being phenomenal? I guess when your editors are Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, your odds are pretty damn high. It's an amazing book. Some of the best writing I've come across in years, certainly the best collection of short stories I've ever encountered.The writing! Great wr...

I'd never read a slipstream collection before. The experience was akin to walking through a gallery modern art. Several of the pieces I connected with and loved instantly. Some have grown on me since the initial encounter. There were a couple pieces which, although I can tell they were very finely crafted, I did not 'get' on any meaningful level. And then there were one or two to which my response was, "This is not art. What is it even doing here?" Overall, though, I recommend the trip.