The Island of Dr. Death

I just got notice that the book I request­ed via Inter-Library Loan—The Island of Dr. Death and Oth­er Sto­ries and Oth­er Sto­ries—has arrived at the desk. By cof­fee time I’ll have it in my hands, and by evening I’ll be read­ing some Gene Wolfe short stories.

I’m prob­a­bly more excit­ed about this than I should be, but then I’m a late-in-life Wolfe con­vert, and I’ve got a lot of catch­ing up to do.

Wolfe is the one that once tore to shreds a pret­ty com­mon writ­ing trope—call­ing some­thing inde­scrib­able when it isn’t real­ly—and then, I like to think, poked fun at his own advice a few years lat­er in a dif­fer­ent nov­el. I’ve seen him described more than once as the writer’s writer, and I look for­ward to read­ing some of his short works.