Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

If I were an Evil Overlord by Martin H. Greenberg (Editor). Typical anthology. A couple stories were fine, one was good, most I DNFed. The ones I enjoyed were ones that took the subject (unexpected people becoming evil overlords) serious. A Goodreads reviewer said it best: "A mediocre-at-best collection of stories about Evil Overlords."


DNF

1) Hasina: Through My Eyes by Michelle Aung Thin. "A gripping story of one child's experience of persecution in Myanmar." While this isn't the sort of book I usually read, I know very little about Myanmar so I figured learning more through a story would be a good thing. The beginning was interesting enough, but then the story turned into info dump and my interest wandered off and never returned.

2) For the Win by Cory Doctorow. This was the oddest book I ever tried to read, and one of the few I've stopped reading for reasons other than the story.

It's not unheard of for an author to include an email address to contact them, but this author's address was @craphound.com. I don't have issues with cursing (especially really mild ones like crap), but what an unprofessional domain name that is.

Lots of books have forwards and dedications, but this one went insane with them. There were the following sections before the story started:

- Read This First section that talked all about copyright info
- A long, long Introduction which was like 20 pages of the author talking about himself
- An Audiobook section, another 20 pages talking about how companies suck
- A The Copyright Thing section, about 15 more pages talking about his special copyright
- A Donations and a Word to Teachers and Librarians section, ten pages about how everyone wants to give him money
- Then there was an About The Bookstore Dedications section...
and on and on and on. All that before the story even started.

And then the author did the worst thing I've ever seen done in a book. He didn't just have a dedication in the front (which is fine), he didn't just have a dedication before each chapter, he had a dedication before each scene. A multi-PAGE dedication. Before each scene in the story!

How was the story? I don't even know. I read the first scene (a few pages), then got to the next scene dedication and just gave up.