I read Sunshine, by Robin McKinley, last weekend. On the whole I liked it. But the baking stuff, while not quite up to Brust levels of food porn, is deeply frustrating if you're reading it after 2 years of low-carbing. I sat there thinking, "Scarfing three huge cinnamon rolls and a cherry tart? Yeah, I could do that right about now."

Meara, did the font changes in this book make you crazy. or was it me?

To a certain extent, yeah. It threw me more the couple times she opened a new chapter from the POV of a new character--one we hadn't even heard of.

There's a LOT of cases where transpeople have been beaten, raped, killed. Hell, we had a rash of them last summer here in DC. It's really fucking depressing. The reality is bad enough--fiction needn't make it worse!

For those of you who read Ursula K. LeGuin, which of her short stories -- short stories only -- would you say is her best, or her most still-relevant-today?

Nutty, I would suggest "Solitude", "Old Music and the Slave Women", or "Paradises Lost", all in The Birthday of the World, one of her recent collections.

I enjoyed Sunshine, though not as much as McKinley's other stuff. It reminded me a lot of her other stuff, like same plot, similar protagonist, different setting. If I had to pick I'd say Deerskin is my favourite, except when I re-read it, I always skip from where the queen dies to where Lissar is on her own. Just knowing what happens in that section is enough for me.

That's the place I stalled out in the book the first time. I eventually managed to read past it, and I like the rest of the book, but boy, is that section horrific.

I wonder where my copy of The Outlaws of Sherwood is.

I love Outlaws of Sherwood, but I've been writing too long, and the pov issues make me cranky. Which is a disappointment, because I really do think it's a marvelous version of the tale.

I didn't love the Orsinian stories, but I can't tell you why.

I have a big love for "Deerskin." I can hardly bear to read that bad section, but I always do. I sort of feel responsible to be with Lissar and witness her story throughout. This may be partly because of the cover art - the woman's face would be a dead ringer for my friend Alice (who passed away recently), were her hair and eyes black instead of white.

Nutty, I'm atypical in that I much prefer Le Guin's later short fiction to her earlier, and I also hate "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." But I would recommend "Solitude," or one of the novellas in Four Ways to Forgiveness, for your purposes. Or maybe "The Matter of Seggri."

A lot of her recent work has been novella length, though, which maybe too long for your purposes?

Right. Although the short story cycle and the novella are big issues in this editor's world -- he was like "So many people have never heard of the short story cycle!!" and I said, not a problem with my people! -- we just don't have the space. Or rather, we could have the space, except Melville's got a novella, and between Melville and Le Guin, in an American fiction anthology, I know who wins.

The Seggri story and Solitude are indeed two I pointed out to him, and the others Amy recommended.