I've been treating myself to some very good books lately, A Brief History of Camouflage by Thaisa Frank has lounged in my TBR pile for too long since I discovered it some time ago, and I'm so glad to have gotten to it...normally, when I read short story collections, I read one story at a time, set the book aside and pick it up again as an intermission in between books, or it rides in my purse to be something to read in the waiting rooms of doctor’s offices, but not this one...I couldn't put it down. The short stories are made up of brief moments, encounters...some of these moments possess a nightmarish quality in the Grimm Fairy Tales and Twilight Zone sort of vein that make them funny-odd, yet the language is so easy-going, and so matter of fact that yes, a woman can camouflage herself so well that she can blend in with the venetian blinds or become one with the chair...odd, I love odd, believable human behavior odd, and even the psychological sort of odd that can breach the barriers of comfort zones. The mysteries of human interaction and reaction (and over reaction) are deftly explored and yet, unexplained...as they should be. ( )