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A review by yapxinyi
Modern Myths by Clara Chow
3.0
I got this for free with the free SingLit initiative with Aesop and was quite excited to start on it. The title and the cover made it look very intriguing. Plus, I love myths! And the word "modern". As I began reading, though, it didn't feel easy to engage with the stories, especially with the earlier half. While the world-building was decent with each short story, it did feel a bit too condensed. Especially because most, if not all, of the stories felt like they were open endings. I'm fine with them, usually, but when there are too many I'm just too tired to decide which I want it to be. Some I just didn't get for sure, like the ending of "I Am Gong Li's Pink IC".
Mostly, the writing was sort of pretty but I felt that it didn't really work for me. So I sorta found myself zoning out and reading without processing, which was very frustrating as I had to go back and read the past few pages again. Funnily enough, this hadn't happen for me in [b:My Year of Rest and Relaxation|44279110|My Year of Rest and Relaxation|Ottessa Moshfegh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1597676656l/44279110._SY75_.jpg|55508660] even though the writing was also dense.
The one story that I actually really liked and hooked me right from the start was "Vanilla", but others I enjoyed more include ""Welcome, 265 Aggregate Scorers!"", "Homer's Tunnel", and "Haze". I sort of know most of my Greek mythology (I hope), but some of these were still a bit too obscure for me to appreciate fully, I felt. Like "Ulamog, or the Ceaseless Hunger" and "Wine Ghost and Club Foot", among others.
The biggest peeve I had was how the top row of each page printed the author's name and book name instead of something like author's name and short story name. It made finding the short story by simple flipping extremely hard if not impossible! Sometimes I had already forgotten the short story name when I'm reading the story in more than one sitting and I had to flip the pages one by one to find the story title. Very, very frustrating.
Mostly, the writing was sort of pretty but I felt that it didn't really work for me. So I sorta found myself zoning out and reading without processing, which was very frustrating as I had to go back and read the past few pages again. Funnily enough, this hadn't happen for me in [b:My Year of Rest and Relaxation|44279110|My Year of Rest and Relaxation|Ottessa Moshfegh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1597676656l/44279110._SY75_.jpg|55508660] even though the writing was also dense.
The one story that I actually really liked and hooked me right from the start was "Vanilla", but others I enjoyed more include ""Welcome, 265 Aggregate Scorers!"", "Homer's Tunnel", and "Haze". I sort of know most of my Greek mythology (I hope), but some of these were still a bit too obscure for me to appreciate fully, I felt. Like "Ulamog, or the Ceaseless Hunger" and "Wine Ghost and Club Foot", among others.
The biggest peeve I had was how the top row of each page printed the author's name and book name instead of something like author's name and short story name. It made finding the short story by simple flipping extremely hard if not impossible! Sometimes I had already forgotten the short story name when I'm reading the story in more than one sitting and I had to flip the pages one by one to find the story title. Very, very frustrating.