IT'S ALL THERE -- BUT IN RAW FORM
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A fascination with men and machines and mind-altering substances -- it's all here in this previously unpublished early effort by Philip K. Dick, but in raw form and lacking the focus and clarity of vision of Dick's later works. "Humpty Dumpty in Oakland" was written before the visionary found his signature style and in a more realistic vein than his best novels and short stories, which most bookstores shelve under science fiction. But where Dick's most memorable creations used the SF tag as a point of departure, "Humpty Dumpty in Oakland" feels constrained by its crime fiction plot and the genre's conventions. Diehard PKD fans will no doubt find this readable thriller an interesting companion piece to Dick's canonical ouvere, and will delight in spotting eventual Dicksian obsessions with the nature of reality and paranoia in their early stages. But initiates should be warned that the novel isn't representative of and doesn't make a good introduction to the writer's compelling world. You can see where Dick is going, but he hasn't gotten there yet with "Humpty Dumpty in Oakland."
827498
Forty-one pieces of writing from 41 writers of crime, noir, horror, fantasy, western, and other pulpy goodness. It's a helluva bargain and the proceeds to go toward lobbying the protection of children from abuse. That last bit is reason enough to plunk down your dollars, but that doesn't mean you walk away empty-handed. These aren't just fluffy pieces, churned out in a fit of charity. Some are hard to read, but it's because they're haunting, not for lack of grammar and spelling. I mean, you have people like Patricia Abbot and Ken Bruen involved.

As with any story collection, some are better than others. But, like anything, "better" is a subjective term so your opinion and mine may differ. That said, I'll tell you about a few of my favorites and if you want to tell me about yours, the comments are open.

"Black Shuck" is one of the longer, if not the longest, of the stories and that gives it space to spread out, not in a blobbish way, but in a layered, atmospheric, moody sort of way that drags you deep into the holler and makes you wonder how you or anyone else will ever get out.

"Adeline" left me with all manner of whatifs, both historically and within the story, the even-if-the-plan-worked-was-it-enough sort. "Done for the Day" is about fourteen kinds of sad and desperate. I found it had almost draped over me the day I read it during lunch and had to shake it off vigorously. "Take it Like a Man" serves as a glimmer of hope in the shape of what, for a while, seems like an all-too-familiar tragedy.

"Planning for the Future" might be easier to accept as a story if I hadn't met girls like that at work. And "A Blind Eye" is about what can happen when ignorance and meanness are met with an overtaxed system. It's easy for people outside such systems to wonder why no one would catch the first or report the second, but people inside know how hard it is to spot the girl in Funk's story and how easy it is to mistake something innocent for something malicious (and vice versa), such as in Gray's tale.

To summarize or give away anything feels unfair. These stories are so compact that it feels like an injustice to let anything out of the bag. Plus, I prefer wandering blindly into short stories. If you're not that kind of person, editor Pluck has been giving you a taste of one per day over on his Facebook page.

Pros: Most of the stories are very strong and some are by well-known names. Your favorites and mine may differ, but it's a solid collection and it benefits and good cause.

Cons: Because of the theme, some of the stories can be a trigger for people who have suffered abuse or may be unpleasant for people who dislike reading about abuse. There's a lot of protection and vengeance in these tales, but just the same... If, however, you feel strongly about the cause, consider giving a copy as a gift or donating to PROTECT directly.

Bottom Line: 39 stories and 2 poems for $4.99 (digital) or $15.95 (paperback) is a good deal. The fact that it goes to help a good cause? Gravy or whipped cream or bourbon -- you know, whichever.
3977624
It's an economically-produced monograph of a wide breadth of Chipperfield's work. I suspect it was produced as a means to quickly broaden access to his work with the rise of his public profile. What is ISN'T is a definitive, deep archive of the sort that Renzo Piano, H&dM and Richard Meier have notably published in volumes, nor is it the publishing blockbuster of coffee-table ambition that architects like Zaha Hadid and Calatrava have published with Taschen. It's also an excellent resource for young architects and students for both its quality and clarity of representation as well as its focus on fundamentals of form and materiality.

I've docked a star simply because more text could have been useful to really articulate the development of the projects in a similar  manner to what Steven Holl has done with his "anecdotes" portion of his Architecture Spoken monograph, which is a pretty good comparison for scope.
1745495
It seems a long time since the last issue of The Rag; I anticipated the relish of the new edition so much that I put down my current read to get stuck in.

There is something about the short story form which perfectly lends itself to "creative writing", and creative writing is what The Rag is about. You get these quick hits of experimental, no-holds-barred, often taboo infused works. Think flavours of Boroughs, Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson - literary umami, a taste hard to define yet strangely delicious - but these are undiscovered writers influenced by the shadier side of the art and bringing newer perspectives.

Okay, personally I find some juicier than others but the advantage of the short form can be its brevity, although here I don't think there are any tiresome reads. I even enjoyed some of the poetry which I usually find, in contemporary hands, inaccessible.

So, highlights for me are; Best Work (Stacey Bryan) the surreal trauma of an artist's physical destruction during creativity; On Bread Alone (Josh Goller) the existential plurality of a messiah figure with sandwiches; Oddly Precious Melancholy (Janna Layton) youth revolution in a debt ridden dystopian society; Someone In The Room Will (Falcon Miller) a tragic tale of a naive soul and a hint of incestuous love; Pneumatology (Tyler Petty) maverick, murderous experiment to determine heavenly transcendence in the devoutly religious.

Flicking back through though, it's hard not to include most of the others as highlights too, they all have something to offer. A great read.
3862054
In this eclectic volume of materials culled from digital and print publications, you will find short snippets of prose and poetry, as well as full blown journalistic articles, fiction pieces, and graphic novellas.

The subject matters range from musings about life's silliness (for example, reportings on fast-food-related crimes and an adult woman who sued her alma mater for not giving her an education that could land her a job), to reflections on the costs of war, capitalism, oppression, and poverty, to questions about the meaning of identity and freedom, and poignant accounts of children coming to grips with the passing of a parent.

The featured authors range from up-and-coming ones like Lille Carre and Rana Dasgupta to well-known writers like Kurt Vonnegut.

The jumble of themes and the slight preponderance of entries dealing with "serious" subject matters such as war, death, oppression, and poverty may not make for a relaxed reading for some readers, but if you're willing to venture out of your comfort zone a little bit, you'll find that there are some real gems in this collection worth discovering, for they'll make you sit up and take notice of their authors' fresh or offbeat takes on and reactions to an event or human condition.

My favorite gem from this anthology, for example, is Bryan Furuness' "Man of Steel", a poignant account of a boy's attempt to reimagining how different things might have been if only he'd been able to use his "super powers" to "save" his mother, and how his father tried to help him come to grips with their loss.
2115306
You can find other information, but this is top of the line.
55499
Raw. Present. Real. You hear and see the whole story and feel connected to own your own life story!

THANK  YOU
4742302
Mr. Cote-Crosskill's book. So many things to say here.

First and foremost, I was struck by how immediate this book was. The author's mind was really accessible here; this is an honest, candid read. At the same time: this isn't a self-aggrandizing post-college journal. It's a big book in a small package, and it takes interesting detours through moments of surrealism and reflection on the modern/post-modern condition.

For the 21st century reader,it's a cleansing experience. You get to follow a man on the cloudy verge of alcoholism, through fluorescent office despair and techno-white noise. And finally, you get to see him make his way to clearer days. It feels good to come out the other side with the author.

Hold out for the end... you'll learn about the muffin man.
2061890
A fine collection of well-curated, very short stories. The flow of what could have been quite a disparate set of voices was maintained by a good editorial eye. It's nice to see flash fiction given its due. I particularly liked the really short ones, the ones that got across a whole lot by giving a vivid slice rather than trying to cram a huge amount into a little space. The two Youngs (Keith and Mike) made an impression with swift, concise strokes. There are sports stories, alt-universe stories, future stories, detective stories, writers-getting-killed stories. A (little) something for everyone.
2160011
Editor Jiz Lee has put together a fantastic collection here. They have acknowledged that they didn't manage to hit all the possible demographics and all the potential perspectives, but I cant believe this is for lack of trying. This collection, while tied together under the theme of coming out, covers much more than just whether or how the contributors told their families about their porn careers. For the most part the essays come across as authentic and personal, crossing generations, ethnicity, and gender identities (though trending a bit towards current and younger performers), and including the experiences of photographers, film makers, academics and educators whose lives in porn don't necessarily include (or include anymore) taking their clothes off and having sex for the camera themselves.

Only a few essays are listed as outright anonymous, though one essayist wrote under the pen name Jaffe Ryder (a Dharma Bums fan, perhaps?). Most authors submitted under their porn names, a few under their given names, and another few under both. The Name is a big topic because whether a chosen porn name is part of the fantasy come-on (Jack Hammer or Denali Winters) or a plausible alternative (Connor Habib or Dale Cooper) most of the essays that touch on privacy touch on the issue of The Name as a thing that serves, however tenuously, as a veil against being stalked or outed. Being stalked, being at the mercy of someone who objects to pornography enough to willfully attempt to threaten performers jobs, housing, or child custody is a thread that cuts through a majority of the essays and colors why and how people have made their decisions to come out and to whom. And, in a very similar story to what LGBT+ people have long said, theres never just one instance of coming out its something that happens repeatedly as they travel amongst different groups (family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, employers, and on and on) and the more labels that can be applied, the more coming out opportunities present themselves.

Coming out like a porn star is a first step toward dismantling some of that age-old shame behavior and Im all for it. Bottom line: I highly recommend this book.
4824266
In a collection of stories this hefty--a sampling filling well over 600 pages and covering every phase of Bowles's long and prolific writing career--you'd expect to find more than your share of duds. But such is not the case here. In fact, there are hardly any stories in this volume that you could consider an out-and-out "dud."

Stephen King once wrote that the ultimate tale of terror is one in which the reader senses that any character, at any time, including the narrator, could die. Bowles seems to write with this dictum in mind. His stories are almost always ominous because of the sense that no one is invulnerable from the dark currents of violence that run just under the surface of life. Even when nothing especially horrific happens, the reader finds himself tense with expectation and breathing something like a sigh of relief. That most of these stories are set in exotic locales, difficult of access and strange of custom, where the "civilized" white, whether tourist or expatriate, is always an outsider only emphasizes what seems to me a constant in Bowles's outlook whether the story is set in Tangier or Tucson--that life is a state of affairs where we are never completely at home. We're always interlopers, just passing through; no matter how long we stay, we'll never be a native; we'll never truly belong.

And so misunderstandings abound--and some of these misinterpretations, whether of the people, the customs, or the landscape, all of them equally unfamiliar and mysterious, can be fatal.

Bowles writes a beautifully clear and straightforward prose that is nonetheless deft enough to express the subtlest psychological nuances. He is famously unsentimental, but not at all unfeeling. As he explains in one of the stories in this volume, emotions are precisely what we can't put into words. So Bowles confines himself to saying what can be said and leaves out the rest. And what can be said is more than enough to point the sensitive reader to all that must remain mute...except for sobs and screams.

Many of these stories end with a shock, but just as many end with a kind of existential "flatness" until you realize that the climax came some pages before and suddenly the shock reverberates inside you like a well-placed, time-delayed bomb.

Some of the later stories in this volume, written when Bowles was heading into his twilight years, seem almost to cross over into the realm of reminiscences and travel essays, others retellings of Middle Eastern fables, rather than proper short stories, but still they have the power to hold a reader's interest, bearing as they do in this volume, the cumulative weight of all the stories that came before them.

A collection of consistently disquieting stories, this volume brings together a generous sampling of the kind of dread far more terrifying than what can be found in any horror novel. Because in these stories, the source of the terror is all too real, all too much of the everyday world we live in.
220230
It's so nice to see some of the more recent, modern stories by independent-leaning authors taking on more challenging topics. This one is raw and redemptive, well-written with enough background to make me feel like I knew the characters. My only complaint was that the story resolved too quickly - I would have eagerly read fifty more pages to flesh things out at the end. Recommended for contemporary, realistic fiction lovers.
3711061
I enjoyed this book. Its real and raw and everything life is...but probably more concentrated given the small circle of people. The slap is just the start really, the reverberations of the one event untangle the real moral failings and bring to light the secrets of the people involved.
1102483
Beautiful Data is a collection of essays on exploring the organisation, manipulation and display of data in 'beautiful way'. The editors, Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher, have attempted to loosely organise the papers into logical process of: collection --> storage --> organisation --> retrieval --> visualisation --> analysis and in theory this works. The challenge as with any collection of papers from such a diverse set of authors (39 in this case) is finding that common thread that flows through the works. In this the editors achieve a passing grade, but frankly, this is sort of the book that offers the reader something they will find useful, but only due to the breadth of articles included. The downside is that there will certainly be articles that a reader will not. The authors seem to realise this and use the term 'loose' with some frequency. But I can't criticise this and would want to. This is a strength of the book. It covers much ground and will appeal to many.

Conceptually, the demand for a book in this area is huge. Having delivered a number of workshops in this area and been asked to adjudicate on conference papers in the past two years, I am certainly aware of breadth, and the demand for skills and knowledge in this broad area.

The first article by Nathan Yau, builds from his popular blog posts on flowingdata.com and provides more depth on two case studies involving the collection, analysis and visualisation of data gathered from going about your own life. He is painting a picture of life to come as more of our life becomes monitored and we are raised to a new level of consciousness of how we live. His article explores how we might internalise the analysis of this data and how it could impact on life activities. This is a flavour of many of the articles in the book. They are on the cutting edge and offer speculative observation of how we are being impacted by emerging technologies and in this collection, you will find great food for thought. If there is any criticism to this it is in that much of this information comes from contributors that share their information via blogs and much seems familiar. If you sense a little trepidation in my review you can feel the hesitation in my fingers as I type. I like the concept and I really like many of the articles. Peter Norvig's 'Natural Language Corpus Data' is particularly well crafted as is Dykes and Wood's on 'The Geographic Beauty of a Photographic Archive'. Both of these are targeted at beautiful data in the purest sense, the inner exploration of data as beautiful in itself when craftfully addressed.

This collection is a needed and valued contribution to a popular discussion. The editors have done an admirable job of locating a way to systematically tie the contributions together. The author's of the specific contributions have also focussed on useful adaptations of theory to actual demonstrable practice. The breadth of the book is extensive and I guess my hesitatcy is just because this breadth is somewhat overwhelming. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in any of the aspects that the book addressed in the broad field of data management, manipulation and presentation. You are sure to find a few articles of particular interest and possible pique new interest in area you may well not have previously explored. It is a very useful companion to Beautiful Visualisation edited by Steele and Iliinsky, both of whom contribute to this volume.
3793128
Some great ideas are contained within, some are clearly aspirational, others are more realistic; it's definitely worth the read, enjoy!
658452
Have them all ... you want something that you just can't put down. Here they are
2615666
Sandwiched between the commercial disappointment of "Clarity" and the crossover smash-success of "Bleed American" is "Singles," a collection of various odds and ends that represents the Jimmy Eat World's rougher indie days. Culled from various EPs, singles and split releases, "Singles" encompasses pretty much all the band represented in the mid to late '90s. Honest, heartfelt, passionate and earnest expression highlight each of the 11 tracks contained within, in true Jimmy Eat World fashion.

"Singles" is a mixed bag in the best of ways. Guitarist and one-time frontman Tom Linton pops up unsurprisingly as lead vocalist on half the songs, linking this collection of songs with the spunky and underrated "Static Prevails" morseso than any other album in the Jimmy Eat World canon. "Opener" kicks off the album with an energetic blast of pop-punk, sitting nicely alongside the near shoe-gaze of "Untitled" or the hooky, begging to be heard on the radio "What I Would Say To You Now." Though not as strong as any of the band's official full-length albums, the songs of "Singles" make for a surprisingly cohesive experience when sequenced alongside one another.

While of little interest to a fan who is still cutting his/her teeth on the likes of "Bleed American" or "Futures," "Singles" is ultimately a crucial building block in Jimmy Eat World's discography, showcasing the band's days as fresh-faced indie upstarts before diving deep into the major label waters. One you've worked your way around "Static Prevails" and, of course, "Clarity," be sure to take in all this little-heard album has to offer.