Years ago I read Vacuum Flowers and loved it — it was, and remains, one of my favorite cyberpunk novels. I remember believing at the time that Swanwick was a mysterious author; I heard a rumor about a sequel to Flowers but nothing else.

The other day I ran across The Dog Said Bow Wow in the library, and now I suspect that, as usual, I simply did not pay any attention to developments in the SF publishing world, but instead just believed I would somehow know. Most likely (continuing my tradition: I didn’t look), Swanwick has had a robust and verbose career.

Anyway, Bow Wow is a series of delightful short stories. I read it in one sitting. You probably will too.

We checked out Three Bags Full from the library on a whim — Elyn grabbed it off the shelf to show to me, and I immediately thought of somehow using it to poke fun at a friend of ours who likes cat mysteries. A mystery solved by a flock of sheep sounds like the next logical step!

This turns out to be a great book. I was hooked from the first page, titled “Dramatis Oves”, and I got a lot of pleasure from reading the rest of it. It is at turns hilarious, scary, existential, sad, and moving. It is consistently creative and a great comfort read.