Book Review- The Best American Short Stories 2013

Short Stories are magic. Like movies, you can experience them in their entirety in a single sitting. As much as I love reading novels, there is something special about giving the attention to one story, without interruption. I'm a fast reader, but it's rare that I read a novel in one go. The brevity of a short story allows me to see the authors entire intent and ingest the scope of the story, while never dropping the pacing. It's magic.

Every year a volume of The Best American Short Stories is released. The stories are culled from literary magazines and they represent a wide variety of themes and styles. I was assigned the 2013 edition for two of my spring writing classes and I used the summer to finish the stories that had not been assigned.

One thing that I did, which was not required or even recommended by my professors, is I read every story aloud. Why? First, it slowed me down. I'm guilty of skimming and as I'm trying to focus on the craft of writing, I really needed to slow down and digest these stories. The other reason, is it gave me a better sense of both the pacing and the tone of the stories. I picked up on the lyrical quality and lilts that some of the authors have in their writing. I challenge you to read a few stories aloud. It really gave me a better perspective, plus my cats like hearing the stories!

My favorite story and the one that generated the most classroom discussion was George Saunder's The Simplica-Girl Diaries. This not-too-distant future story about "keeping up with the Jones" is highly unsettling and goes to very unexpected places.

I admired the intensity and power-play in Bret Anthony Johnson's Encounters with Unexpected Animals. This also has a wonderful twist.

Horned Men by Karl Taro Greenfield had so many layers, that it also made for a polarizing classroom discussion. Every time someone brought up a new point, I felt my opinion of the story shift. I hope that my writing is as complex as Greenfields.

The story that got me in my gut was Joan Wickersham's The Tunnel or The News from Spain. This deeply affecting story of a daughter acting as a caretaker for her aging mother, hit me on a personal level. It's so raw and beautifully rendered.

This is a fine collection of Short Stories. Although I had my favorites, I felt like every story was a worthy addition.

Book Review- Daniella Martin's Edible

Can bugs be the answer to our growing food supply and environmental problems? In her book, Edible, Daniella Martin makes a compelling case for the need to ease the western world into the idea of consuming insects as an alternative to meat.

What I really enjoyed about Martin's book, was the plethora of factoids. My reading was constantly interrupted, as I had to share little tid-bits with my husband. For example, did you know that Japan has the world's biggest, deadliest species of Hornet and that dozens of people die a year from attacks? Whoa. As I read about Martin's travels around the world, I learned a lot about about cultural customs, geography and entomology. Martin writes about her travels in a humorous and engaging voice. For the most part, I felt entertained as I learned more about insects in this book, than I ever did during several years of Biology.

Most interesting, were the sections where Martin visited various laboratories that are running experiments with insect protein, including how to gauge which products will potentially work in western cultures, both for taste and appearance. I enjoyed reading about the restaurants and chefs around the world who specialized in bugs. Martin likened eating insects to eating sushi several decades ago. Sushi took awhile to catch on in popularity outside of Japan, but now it's incredibly popular in America and Europe. Could bugs be the next big thing?

There were a few minor issues that I had with her book. Primarily, I took issue with her Epilogue, which is a summary and argumentation for the need to eat insect protein. It's not that she didn't make many valid points during this section, but even though she approached it cautiously, I think that vegans might really take issue with her dismissal of the vegan diet as a healthy lifestyle. I'm not vegan, but I pictured my vegan friends up in arms with that section. The epilogue brought down the pacing and took me out of the fun that I was having with the first 2/3rd of her book. It shifted gears from a fun adventure, to a thesis paper. I was already sold on the idea of insect protein, I didn't need this additional form of argumentation.

The very end of the book is a quick users guide to eating insects. There are recipes and a break down of how to harvest common insects. If you're looking to pursue it, this looks to be a great starter resource. I've tried bugs once (ants and crickets) and I would be up for eating them in the future, even pursuing them as a real dietary addition, but as a beginner, I think that trying it out at home might be a bit intimidating. I was intrigued by the idea of these clubs that have insect eating parties. They sound like a safe way to explore something that is quite frankly a foreign concept. I liked that Martin addressed the foreignness of bugs in the western diet and the difficulty of changing cultural held ideals.

I have to fess up and admit that I finished the book before bed last night and I had a dream that I had a pet tarantula. Normally, a dream about a tarantula would be classified as a nightmare, but something about Martin's book shifted my perspective!

Edible is a worthy read and I'd love to go to one of Martin's lectures at our local Natural History Museum.

Book Review- John Water's Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America

I'm a big fan of John Waters, both his films and his books. I love his quirky sense of humor and bizarre characters. His stories are completely outrageous.

As much as I enjoy his fiction, I was even more intrigued by the premise for his latest book, Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America. In this new mostly non-fiction book, Waters' documents his journey as he hitchhikes from his home in Baltimore to his home in Maryland. Naturally, I wondered if life would imitate his art and if he would be picked up by anyone resembling one of his crazy characters.

Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America, isn't strictly non-fiction. In the prologue Waters mentions John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America, which was published in the 60's and passed off as non-fiction. However, it turned out that Steinbeck had fabricated his entire journey. Waters' does actually get out there and hitchhike, but the first half of the book is dedicated to his imaginary journey that he wrote prior to setting off on the real adventure.

The imaginary journey is ambitious. It's broken up into two sections, first the imaginary best-case-scenario trip and second, his imagined trip from hell. The characters in both situations are similar, like something ripped from his stories. Since his creations are such colorful characters, I expected Waters' version of hell to be rides with dull people. What could be worse than boring? No, the bad rides are hyper versions of the craziest people from his imagination. It's as if Waters is being tortured by his own creations. It's Waters at his most horrific.

Although extremely creative and often humorous, the fictitious journey section failed to completely hold my interest. I read several other books, while I was trying to get through the first half of this book. I just couldn't read it in large chunks. However, once I made it to the real journey, I read it straight through. The non-fiction stole the show.

What made the non-fiction so compelling was Waters venerability. Sure, he brought credit cards and a phone. If he had ever been in real trouble, he had the means to get out of it. He made this clear. He wasn't going to be completely nuts in the name of getting a story. However, he still had fears and discomforts. He spent a lot of time out in the elements and although all of the drivers were harmless, a few had barely concealed checkered pasts. Occasionally he was recognized by a fan, but often people had no idea who they were picking up and sometimes didn't believe that he was a famous filmmaker. He came close, but he never bailed on the project.

What really touched me about his travels, was the overriding theme of kindness and decent people that he met on the road. More than once, people tried to give him money, because they thought the he was in need. One woman even refused to take no for an answer and he had to find a way to pay-it-forward.

This creative endeavor was very much in line with the quality about Waters work that endears me to him. The characters that he creates, good/bad, no matter how outlandish have this quality of living their authentic selves in a out and proud way. I felt like Waters highlighted the people that picked him up in a similar fashion. For the most part, no one that was too much of a "Character" picked him up...there was a ministers wife, a mayor, a police officer...fairly ordinary people that would not find their way into a Waters movie. However, with each chapter he gave these people their due and I liked the way that Waters interacted with them, even though some of them clearly had disparate social and political ideals. Waters connected with each person in a meaningful way.

I'd pick up Waters if I saw him on the side of the road and like many of his friends, I was relieved when he made it safely to his destination!

Just for fun, here are a couple of pictures tom when I met Waters in 2011 at UCLA. He signed my copy of Role Models.