An Uneven, Almost Superfluous Collection
922649
I'll admit it -- I picked up The Double Life Is Twice as Good: Essays and Fiction by Jonathan Ames because it contains the short story "Bored to Death," which formed the basis of the HBO series of the same name. I hadn't previously read any of Ames work, though I enjoyed the series and wanted to see how it differed from the original source material.

"Bored to Death" has the same basic premise as the TV show -- a writer gets bored and posts an advertisement as an "unlicensed" private investigator on Craigslist. He then gets called to work on a case and gets much more than he bargained for. Except in the case of the short story, it takes a much darker turn than its HBO counterpart.

However, outside of the inclusion of "Bored to Death," the rest of the book is an uneven mix of what can loosely be described as journalism -- including features on a Goth music festival, Marilyn Manson, Lenny Kravitz and New York City's Meatpacking District, among others -- personal essays, short stories, introductions and forewords from other books and old journal entries. It feels like a lot of it was added to pad out a short book, and the length is still on the extremely short side even with the extra material.

As with other popular essayists, Ames writes in the same voice in all of his work -- even the fiction. The personal essays and journalism are entertaining and sometimes funny, but the journal entries from Ames' youth are not particularly engaging and seem overly self indulgent. I'm also puzzled over the inclusion of two forewords that Ames wrote -- one for a graphic novel he scripted, another for a friend's book. Taken out of their original context, they don't really offer much to the reader.

I'm guessing that the Double Life is Twice is Good may not be the best place to start if you're interested in Ames' writing. Although I found some of the stories mildly funny, Ames sexual neuroses and performance art friends (including a character who goes by the moniker "Mangina," or as Ames affectionately refers to him, "Mangie") got a bit tedious. I'm not particularly interested in middle aged adolescents -- and there's a lot of them in this book, including Ames himself.

Despite my personal biases, I think the overall scatter shot nature of this collection makes it difficult to recommend. There is some great writing in here, but there's also a lot of filler. It makes me wonder if this was published to cash in on Ames' television series, and since "Bored to Death" wasn't long enough to stand on its own, Ames and his editors had to dig out whatever they could to justify the price of the book.
1958590
This is a pleasingly slick and blocky hardbacked volume offering a nice sampling of every single one of City Lights' pocket poet editions.  But I think the selection could be better.

First, and perhaps predictably, the Beats, and above all Ginsberg, get too much space.  Not only does Ginsberg have multiple books in the series, he often gets many poems from each book, while other poets only get one.  It's very hard to get a real sense for poets who are new to you--and thus to decide if you want to explore them further--from a single poem.  Some of the imbalances are mind-boggling.  Corso gets one sole poem, while Kerouac (not a BAD poet, but certainly not a great one) gets eight?!

Second, Ferlinghetti seems undecided on the nature of the volume--is it supposed to represent the best poems in the series, or is it a nostalgic history trip?  This is most evident in the selections from Ginsberg--which often appear to have been picked simply because they offer explicit or implicit elegies for each of Ginsberg's famous Beat pals.  Many of the Ginsberg selections are pretty disposable--yet his best poems, "America" and "Supermarket in California," are left out, and only part II and the footnote of "Howl" are included.

That said, it's nice to get an easy introduction to City Light's offerings beyond the Beats, that's really the book's best feature.  There are many wonderful poems by Kenneth Patchen, a perfect pick of O'Hara, as well as Prevert, Nicanor Parra, Norse, even Picasso, Brecht, and Mayakovsky.  It makes me wish they had just trimmed the beats out entirely--or given them their own separate City Lights anthology--so we could get a better taste of the others.
464723
The first, and title, story in this collection is wonderful! It focuses on the touching, and sometimes amusing, relationship between a successful doctor, whose parents want him to get married and move out already, and his high school friend, who is trying to make a living as a lyricist/poet. I could have wished it had been longer and more fleshed out, but it's lovely as it is.

However, two of the later stories seem to be Fumi Yoshinaga's misguided attempt at writing sci-fi/horror/mystery. One of them features "sexaroids," multiple violent deaths, a male harem, and incestuous overtones. The other is a bizarre, almost moralistic, tale in which virtually the entire population of Tokyo (and possibly the world) simply vanishes.

One of the other stories almost seems like it could be a footnote to Fumi Yoshinaga's Ichigenme series. It chronicles the unsuccessful attempts of a law professor to find love after his wife dies. It's sad, it's not yaoi, and it feels rather unfinished.

The last story is actually interesting and compelling, if sad. It follows the life of a pianist whose promising start never actually panned out. It is yaoi, sort of, but that's not really the point of the story.

All in all, this volume is quite the mixed bag. There are good stories here, but there are also some off-putting ones.
777203
As a collector of metaphors, similes, analogies -- as well as other clever adages and sayings, I was disappointed in this collection.

While admittedly there is some historical value in knowing where many of our common metaphorical clichs have come from, one hardly thinks that history alone should be the final arbiter or criterion for inclusion - even if they have been penned by some of our most famous authors. And even though the author took the pain to carefully explain the difference between these and clichs. Yet, how could he fail to filter the latter from this collection?

Plus, times and the rules of cleverness do change. They are both contextual as well as evolutionary. This book is a lot like watching an old movie before acting moved into the modern era. The old movies still may have great nostalgic value, but the art and craft of acting has long since moved on ...

The same goes for metaphors, similes and analogies: Arguably the final criterion for inclusion should be creativity and cleverness, not history or nostalgia. And in the view of this reader, the items in this collection, rather surprisingly, too often fall short of that test.

Also, is it not a bit counterintuitive (not to mention disconcerting) to spend pages discussing a single pithy sentence, when both its beauty and meaning lies in the subtlety of the surprise of the discovery itself?

Most of this book is inelegant in the same way that explaining the historical importance and cleverness of the punch line of a joke might be?  Two stars
3875083
I bought this book hoping to see some of S. Clay Wilson's Zap Comix strips and drawings, like Captain Pissgums and his Pervert Pirates, and his incredibly gross and funny single-page panels.  Those aren't there.  This is an interesting collection of his early work and his later work.  Most of the later work is so overcomplicated and overpopulated that the transgressive humor is lost. Robert Crumb's introduction is worth reading, but I'm still waiting for a collection from Wilson's great Zap Comix years.
2781935
It is tough to review a partial book, but that is what we readers of the advanced readers copy received.  Judging from the four stories included in this copy, I can say that the pages are visually interesting with representative NY photographs and a map at the start of each story designating the location, so I anticipate that this will be an attractive book when published.  Unfortunately, of the four stories included in this pre-release copy, I was not thrilled or intrigued.  The title, Manhattan Mayhem, was not represented by the tales.  Manhattan, yes, but mayhem, I did not get.  Each of the stories was written by an award winning author, yet I would be surprised if these would be on their "best of" list of creations.  Instead, it is a collection of assorted tales which are representative of a particular location in NYC.  Included are the first four stories (without the Introduction by Mary Higgins Clark) laid out as the preliminary table of contents states.  There is a lengthy story by Nancy Pickard on the Upper West Side which was the strongest in character, S. J. Rozan in Chinatown was the weakest, Ben H. Winters in Chelsea was the most predictable, and Brendan DuBois in Times Square was written in a style more like a mystery.  The photos are great, but this is a collection of mystery stories.
1594205
Werewolves on motorcycles, in suburbs, locked in the basement; family curses, aquired diseases, accidental side-effects&#151Running with the Pack offers up 22 werewolf stories from a variety of modern urban fantasy authors. Those offerings are plentiful and brief, and werewolves are an engaging base premise, and so the collection is more consumable than most short story anthologies. However, few of the stories stand out: there's a number which are decent but forgettable, just as many which are disappointing, and only a handful I'd consider good--of which only two are must-reads. Too often the stories are written to theme, even if they weren't written for this collection; they rely on the fact of their werewolves, putting all their energy into basic world/monsterbuilding, and say little more than that: where werewolves are an analogy, it's cursory or blatant; in large part, there's nothing alive or wild in these beasts. Downum's "The Garden, The Moon, The Wall" is one exception--her story is dreamlike, liminal, and haunted. Palwick's "Gestella" is another, a brutal experiment in voice which turns werewolves into incisive social critique. "Blended," "The Direwolf," and "Inside Out" are also pretty good, and some of them are unique to this collection. But on the whole, Running with the Pack is uninspired. It can be an addictive mix, and offers an interesting (if not particularly promising) overview of modern urban fantasy authors, but that's about all. I can't recommend it.
4061186
The annual collections of best essays are always remarkable compendiums.  Many of this year's selections were personal reminiscences written in the first person, in much the same mode as editor Cheryl Strayed's own recounting of her coming to terms with loss in "Wild", her account of her solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail.  Though I am glad to have acquired this and enjoyed many, if not most of the essays, I found it to be a less fulfilling collection than prior years' collections of best essays.  Many seemed to lack power or any sense of revelation, any real justification for the telling.  They were simply a recounting, and left me feeling "meh."
789538
Uneven collection of four stories.  The title story, a Perry Mason mystery, is the weakest of the four.  The "Jeweled Butterfly" introduces two new "detectives" - Peggy Castle and her Uncle Benedict.  They solve the mystery is somewhat leisurely fashion. "Something Like a Pelican" is from the Lester Leith series. These are all fun.  This one features Leith trying to become a writer, struggling over how to begin his article. No doubt Gardner himself experienced this challenge at some point during his writing career.  The fourth story, "A Man is Missing", is a gem. What makes this story so appealing is Gardner's enthusiastic description of a pack trip into rural Idaho.  It's clear he once went on such a trip and loved it.  The mystery is OK, too, but mostly this story makes me wish that I could replicate this trip for myself.
4315283
"Autumn Wind and Other Stories" is a curious collection.  Basically it collects fourteen short stories by various Japanese authors, dating back to the early 1900s and up to the early 1970s.  The authors range from the very famous, such as Kawabata Yasunari  ("The Titmouse") and Akutagawa Ryunosuke ("The Garden"), to many whom I have never heard of, and who may have only written one or two important stories in their lives.  Somewhat linked thematically, the collection features tales of that certain style of Japanese writing, one where the bulk of the story is unsaid, and the reader is challenged to read what is unspoken in order to glimpse the meaning.  Many feature uncertain memories, vague feelings and a drifting, dreaming quality that is also familiar.  A single translator, Lane Dunlpop, has done all of the translating, which is unusual, but pulled off very well.

Each tale is a product of its time.  "The Fox" (1909), by Nagai Kafu, features a childhood memory as a starting point for the sadness of the encroaching modernization of Japan, and the vanishing of the beautiful past.  "Flash Storm" (1916), by Satomi Ton is one of my favorites, a sexually-charged tale of social barriers and the contest between lust and propriety.  "One Woman and the War" (1946) by Sakaguchi Ango is a cynical look at the final days of WWII from the point of view of the savaging poor, but is surprisingly light-hearted. "Borneo Diamond" (1951) by Hayashi Fumiko tells the story of a war-prostitute lured to Borneo by lies.  The lead story, "Autumn Wind" (1939) by Nakayama Gishu deserves its honors, telling the story of a charming low-class prostitute and the group of lumberjacks who fall in love with her, much to the disgust of the wealthier classes who consider  them human garbage, incapable of such delicate feelings.  Another jewel of the collection, "Along the Mountain Ridge" (1956) by Kita Morio is a haunting tale of high mountains, that might possibly be a ghost story depending on how you read it.

None of the stories are very long, but all of them are worth reading.  People unfamiliar with Japanese literature might find the style confusing, as they rarely follow plot lines, and few have what might be called a satisfying ending.  Instead, each story whispers away, leaving a feeling of loss and contemplation, and mournful beauty.
4047829
An uneven collection of stories, only some of which are related to Christmas and few that deserve to be called "classics."
1487307
To be honest, this book was mildly disappointing. A few of the short stories are pretty good, some okay, and some are just not very good at all. Best parts for me were the Connor O'Sullivan and Glen Bates sections; worst was Shae & Laddie, followed by the second Kopriva story. The final one, set near El Paso, started out good but soon slumped into another disappointing ending. The Shae & Laddie story was presented in this order: The ending first, then jumps to a previous time, then and even earlier time, then on to the beginning. Disjointed and hard to follow is the best description I can come up with.
This anthology is not as closely related to the River City novels as I'd hoped, and the author notes this in the afterword. He also explains his reasoning behind many of the unhappy and unspectacular endings that occur in most of these short stories. But who among us reads the afterword prior to reading the book? LOL
1492742
It's reasonable to think that one might paint a rich picture of New York City using the park as its focus. Unfortunately, this collection is a little too uniform in its composition and a little too repetitive in its content to achieve that goal. Most of the contributors are white men between 40 and 65 years old who grew up on the Upper-West or Upper-East sides, and their experiences of the park are fairly uniform. So many of the stories collected here relate how gritty it used to be, and how it's cleaner now but in some ways they regret the loss of edge. I'm not saying that's a false experience, but it is an obvious one and it would take more curatorial artistry than is visible here to make it worth reading six times.

That said, many of the individual essays are excellent. The problem is context, they are forced to compete for the reader's attention with too many other similar pieces. Adrian Benepe's introduction was a surprise; he's the Parks Commissioner, but his piece was better written than some of those by famous novelists and essayists. Not so Doug Blondsky of the Central Park Conservatory, whose epilogue is comparatively cliched and leaden. Mark Helperin's essay, very polished, memorable. David Michaelis's essay about raising sons in the city told via their experiences fishing in the park was a beautifully crafted little thing. It is hurt somewhat by being followed by another piece that is similarly structured, but uses the catching of turtles in the park as its central metaphor, rather than the catching of fish.

Generally, the real reminiscences like that of Francine Prose or David Michaelis work better than the bits of fiction like Jonathan Safran Foer's unreadable (self-parody?). A few chapters, including the one by Paul Auster, are a mystery -- is this a memoir or a short story, or something in between?

David Knowler's bird watching piece was a pleasant surprise but then followed by another bird piece by Mary Winn.

A few pieces seemed incompletely edited, including John Burnham Schwartz's. For example, he mentions avoiding "landmines, real and imagined" in the park. Really, John? Even at its gritty worst in the 1970s, there were never landmines in the park. I think he was referring to patches of mud, or dog poop or something.

The collection contains 21 pieces, most by well-known writers. You'll probably find some by people whose work you've admired in the past, and the collection may introduce you to some new writers as well.
2639899
'Tis a pitifully small collection of poems gathered here, considering Owen is often called the best of the World War I poets.
His "Dulce et Decorum Est" is perhaps one of the most anthologized English poems from that era. Easily accessible, I can remember reading and pondering it when I was still in high school. That poem and several others in this slim volume still apply. Wars never really resolve anything, and yet they go on and on, as if humankind never learns anything at all. This collection is gem-like, marred only by a few incompleted fragments, and I wondered why they were even included. Probably because there were so few finished poems, a true tragedy of that war. Just twenty-five years old and only beginning to find his voice as poet, Wilfred Owen died a week before the armistice. And yet he lives on in these poems, THE WORKS OF WILFRED OWEN. An important little book for any collector of serious literature.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
2230629
"Young Warriors" is, on the whole, an enjoyable collection.  It contains fifteen stories about young people and children written by authors of greatly varying fame and experience.  Some of them are wonderful- I particularly enjoyed the first story in the collection, "The Gift of Rain Mountain" and Pierce's own story- and some of them leave much to be desired.  The collection is interesting in that it seeks to bring together stories about very different topics- from mermaids to Roman invaders.  However, this also means that the volume does not flow particularly well for one who wishes to read more than one story at a sitting.  Further, some of the stories are quite juvenille, while others are aimed at a teenage reader.  This, along with the divergent writing styles of the authors, makes the collection a bit choppy.

The essays which introduce and conclude the collection added nothing to my reading.  Pierce's introduction is little more than a naming of the "warrior" in each story and a statement about how we can define a warrior in any number of ways, and the concluding essay said nothing more than that the concept of a warrior is still relevant to American society as well as other societies in our own time.  These things are such as to be known by any intelligent reader who picks up the volume.  Further, the contest to "be a young warrior" in the back of the text struck me as tawdry.  Thus, although I did enjoy many of the stores, I found the collection itself somewhat lacking.
1145444
I was introduced to Matt Coward thru a short story in an anthology & I loved his DI Packham series.  But I was disappointed in this collection.  It seemed to me to be a jumble sale in terms of quality.  I've been a lifelong avid, wide-ranging reader who's read 60 years' worth of material - with lots of science fiction & mystery.  But I often struggled through these overly long (in my opinion), slowly paced stories.  It wasn't that I didn't understand the points of the stories, in fact I liked many of very original concepts.  But rather I didn't find the points, in most cases, to be well executed.  I did like the commentary which accompanied each story, allowing us a glimpse of the origin of the story idea & the evolution over time of its writing.
803854
There is about 6 stories in this collection that are worthy of  being called "The Best"  .  The remainder of them are mediocre, or just pointless.  The short story format is by definition is limited in its scope of ideas and character development  However,  It should not convey its meaning or theme by implication or make  reader discover it. Good literature is not a representational art like some forms of painting  It should declare and explain, and not by necessity have the reader do it.