Made of Library

Welcome to my new monthly round-up series. Each month I’ll take a look at what I’ve been reading and writing over the last month. I hope that these will be interspersed with book reviews and short stories. January didn’t feel like a particularly heavy reading month, but I finished four books so I’m technically ahead of schedule. I’d love to have enough time for reading to continue getting through a book a week, but based on previous years I’m looking to get through 40 books this year .   What I Finished Reading Free Speeches I got this one a few years ago as part of a Neil Gaiman rarities Humble Bundle. It was an interesting read, I didn’t really know about any of these issues facing the comic book industry. There was only a short piece in there by Gaiman, the rest were from others involved in the industry. I won’t write a full review for this one. 3 out of 5. An American Family by Jackson Baer I was given this free ebook in exchange for an honest review. I have ...

Mother told me not to go all the way to the end of the garden path. I was to go as far as the big tree on the left, the one that had the big knot in its trunk that looks like a man’s face. When I reached that tree I was to turn around and come back. I didn’t listen to Mother. Aunt Izzy said Mother is just being sensible and it’s for my own good. Aunt Izzy said that next time she visits she would come with me and we would be allowed to go past the tree with the man’s face. She said that maybe we would even find a fairy ring out there. I didn’t wait until Aunt Izzy’s next visit. Now the King is saying I have to complete his quest before I can go home again. That’s why I started to get scared. Then I started crying. I told the King “I don’t want to complete a quest, I just want to go home!” “Then why didn’t you stay at home in the first place, instead of coming bumbling your way into my kingdom, disrupting the peace?” “I’m sorry, I just wanted to see a fairy ring,” I said. “A...

“Do you know what an endling is, Captain?” the creature asked. “No. I haven’t heard that term before. What is an Endling?” the Captain entertained the question. “An endling is the last individual of an entire species.” He let that sink in. “That’s me. I am an endling.” “All species come to an end eventually. Either through an extinction event or evolution, when they become a new, different species. Nothing is stagnant. The universe is ever changing”, the Captain reasoned. “Yes, but how do you think I feel towards you, knowing that you were the ‘extinction event’, as you call it, for my particular species? I can tell you it’s not kindly. I’d rather you just leave me alone to die, Captain. I’m not going to participate in any more of your pointless tests. I think you’ve gathered enough data on my species. There’s little point gathering any more, seeing as how we’re all dead.” The creature crossed its cell, lay down on its narrow bed and turned its back to the transparent wall, w...

Barry Marshall knew that he was dead. He’d been expecting it for some time, and now that he was looking down at his own body he knew with a certainty that it had finally happened. He was disgusted by what he saw in the bed before him. The slack jaw hanging open, chin covered in drool. The fat stomach, the flaky scalp, the skin wrinkled all over like old wrapping paper. He was glad to finally be dead. Death wasn’t what he’d expected though. He wasn’t a religious man, so he hadn’t thought that he’d be off to heaven or hell or that place inbetween. He honestly just thought it would be nothing. He’d die and that would be the end of it. He wouldn’t be aware that he was dead, his consciousness would just blink out of existence. Now that Barry Marshall was dead he didn’t know what to do. Should he stick close to his corporeal body? He didn’t want to go too far in case they moved it and he didn’t know if his ghost, spirit, whatever he was now, was somehow linked to his physical remains...

I don’t know why I’d never noticed the shop before. I was sure it hadn’t been there yesterday. I walk past that row of stores every day and I’d never noticed it. I would have noticed something like that. The glass-fronted windows were empty, waiting for a display to go in. What that display might be, I couldn’t even guess. There was no indication from the outside as to what kind of store it actually was. The words above the door said DISPARATE TIMES in a gothic font. My curiosity got the better of me and I went in. “Ah, good. You made it”. I looked around to try and find where the voice had come from. A small, elderly man shuffled around behind me and locked the door. He peered out through the window as if checking whether I’d been followed. “Take a seat, take a seat,” he said, ushering me to a small, round table near one of the display windows. I sat down and saw a tray of tea laid out before me. A steaming teapot, two fine, porcelain teacups, a sugar bowl and a sm...