I've been reading Fantasy Gone Wrong, edited by the team of Martin Greenberg and Brittiany Koren. I've had the book for quite a while, but at the time I purchased it, others were in mid-read--and I have a guideline for myself that no more than three books be in the active reading pile at any one time.

Hah. Not that I always adhere to that rule, however. So it happens frequently that I get a book for which I have lusted and I just have to start reading it right away. This happens often enough that I'm not sure I have any guideline at all, at all, but I'll keep up the pretense.

Anyway, as I was saying, I'm reading the fantasy anthology and enjoying it. Some of the story are "hits" by which I mean that I find they have a certain sparkle, I will laugh out loud or exclaim at the end, and I'm sorry they were so short and too soon over.

Others are just okay, perfectly readable, and just as perfectly forgotten. What is the difference between the two? What makes one story a star, so memorable that you start to search for other books by the same author, and another story be just average?

I remember reading a novella, "The Last of the Winnebagoes" by Connie Willis (if that story doesn't make you cry, you have a heart of stone) and subsequently embarking on a campaign to find and read everything she has ever written, Lincoln's Dreams, The Doomsday Book and Bellwether among them.

This fantasy anthology will send me looking for other books/stories by some of the authors, too. It's the latent detective in me; I love to excavate for uncommon information and obscure facts and esoteric words. You dig?