This post is part of a series in which I describe the twenty-four books I read in 2018 for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge.
Task: Read a one-sitting book.
I knew what I was going to read for this task as soon as I saw it. I waited for a day when I went into work late and my daughter was at daycare, giving me a delicious stretch of time to eat ice cream and savor this one entirely at my leisure.
Full disclosure: I’m not particularly objective when it comes to this particular writer. Here’s why. In 2015 or so, I’d attended a free workshop at the Fayetteville Public Library by Toni Jensen, a professor in the University of Arkansas’ creative writing department. Her presentation was about mashing up genre and literary technique. It was a really good one, too.
A million years ago, I’d thought I was going to apply to this particular MFA program but had been put off by its crystal clear statement regarding genre – no, and get offa my lawn, I think was roughly what the department website said at the time. So I was pleasantly surprised by Toni Jensen’s approach, which didn’t assign any moral value to the terms “genre” and “literary.” Instead, she had a very practical explanation of what fell under each column and how and when it made sense to mix things up. She asked us all what we wrote, and I shyly copped to horror. She suggested I read Stephen Graham Jones.