Chadzilla ROARS!!!

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything - by Janelle Brown

On the day that his company posts a record IPO, Paul Miller informs Janice, his wife of twenty-eight years, that he is leaving her.  Overwhelmed by grief and anger, Janice hides in a drug induced haze of denial.

Margaret, Janice and Paul's eldest daughter, has not only been dumped by her fame craving actor boyfriend, but, thanks to losing on a risky financial gamble, has also free fallen into bankruptcy.

Lizzie, Janice and Paul's youngest, and somewhat neglected, daughter attempts to get the attention she thinks she wants by engaging in promiscuous activity at school.

Hunkered down in the Miller home, Janice, Margaret, and Lizzie are in for a long and painful summer of self-discovery.

Lucky for me, Janelle Brown's debut novel All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is not a long and painful read.  But it is a long and soapy one.  So soapy, in fact, that I began to think I could clean my hands simply by holding the book in them.

The positive reviews that I have read for the novel refer to it as a satire.  While I found sections of the book humorous, they were few and far between.  For satire to work, I think, the read must have some knowledge of what is being satirized.  I know precious little about the lifestyle of the Santa Rita, California ultra-wealthy (and, for once, I am very happy that I am ignorant of such a shallow, trite, and mean-spirited way of life as the one described in this book) so a great deal of the humor was lost on me.  The only portion of the novel that I related to, being a recovering Evangelical Christian, were the moments involving Lizzie's attempt at finding friends and kindly authority figures at an Evangelical church.  That was a spot on bit of satire.

The book was also very well written, with strong characterizations and a plot that kept moving and kept me wondering what would happen next, and how bad would it be.  That was enough to keep me from disliking the book, and there was a lot in it for me to dislike.

I have had enough personal experience with chemical dependency to know that Janice is given way too easy of an out from her addiction.  That Brown looks away from Janice's withdrawals when she decides to kick her drug of choice, rather than give her soon to be ex husband a legal upper hand, simply adds insult to a narrative injury.

Having been bankrupt, I also lost my struggle to care one bit about Margaret's self-induced financial plight.  I also spent far too much time around hypocritical and self-absorbed "feminist" types like her while attending San Francisco State University to ever want anything more than for her to stop feeling so goddamn sorry for herself, stop resenting her parents (and hating her mother) for living a lifestyle that she did approve of, and to just grow the fuck up, already.  "Pardon my French."

At least Lizzie, being fourteen and lacking a strong authority figure to help her with her adolescent problems, has a suitable excuse or acting like an immature brat.  She is one!

Now if all of these characters struggles went somewhere meaningful, the book would be far better than the moderately entertaining, albeit very readable, diversion that it is.  But they do not.  Salvation comes at the last minute, via a deus ex machina, and no personal growth or serious re-evaluation of lifestyle or life choices occurs.  At least none that truly satisfied me.  There were hints, but I wanted something more than the Three Millers getting through a difficult summer with their insanely huge portion of the family fortune intact.

Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Just After Sunset: Stories - by Stephen King

As I nibbled away at Just After Sunset, I kept thinking about a comment that Stephen King made during an interview on the radio program Fresh Air.  He said, with his trademark candor, that he was very well aware that his creative hot streak was over, and that it would not be heating up again, ever.  The reason that I kept thinking about that comment was due to the fact so many of the stories collected in this book are tired rehashes of material King has done before, and far better.

The best two examples of just how cold that creative hot steak has become, came early in the anthology.  The Gingerbread Girl covers the exact same ground as Misery and the almost identical Lunch at the Gotham Cafe, while Rest Stop is just a bland and suspense free recycling of themes King explored to far greater effect in The Dark Half.  Other examples are the slight to the point of pointlessness Harvey's Dream and Graduation Afternoon.  Dream, with a little effort, could have been shaped into something more than the wasted opportunity that it is; but Graduation Afternoon, from start to finish, is the kind of tired narrative cliche one would expect from a High School student, not a seasoned professional of King's caliber.

Willa and Ayana are middle of the road disappointments.  The former is a ghost story that is far too heavy handed to achieve the emotional resonance it clearly is striving for, while the latter is a "miracle worker" fantasy that is far too light handed to satisfy.  The other middle of the road story is The Cat from Hell, a "Golden Oldie" from King's hot streak era that will be familiar to any that have seen Tales from the Darkside: The Movie.  It is an entertaining tale, both not a particularly memorable one.

The book perked up when I finally reached the suspenseful fantasy thriller, Stationary Bike, an enthusiastic "Fuck You" to all those pieces of exercise equipment (and exercise junkies) that are clogging up those ubiquitous Fitness Centers out there.  The Things They Left Behind packs the emotional punch that is missing from the above mentioned stories and is a great meditation on survivor's guilt and the need for "closure."  The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates is a fine little story that sits somewhere between Willa and The Things They Left Behind.

But the crown jewel of the book is N., which is, flat out, the collection's best offering.  A spooky slow burn of a nightmare that is a gorgeous narrative homage to Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan and the celebrated mythology created by H.P. Lovecraft.

Which leaves A Very Tight Place, the book's final yarn.  The less said about this nauseating story of a man forced to work is way out of the business end of one of those Port-O-Sans, the better.  It's disgusting, nasty, gross, and very well written.  Stephen King is every bit as sick in the head as he is talented, which is why I always look forward to reading him.  Make of that comment what you will.

The Signet Classic Book of Mark Twain's Short Stories - Edited and With an Introduction by Justin Kaplan

Sixty plus (that's well over six hundred pages of) short stories by one of the finest and funniest American humorists to even put pen to paper, Mr. Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens).

I must have some kind of Reader's Attention Deficit Disorder (RADD!), because it has taken me well over a year to read  The Signet Classic Book of Mark Twain's Short Stories while I plowed through a novel of similar length in a little over two weeks.  I'm guessing it's the difference between a massive amount of individual stories clumped together versus a series of interconnected plots and subplots woven together to form a singular narrative tapestry.  The former has me squirming and wishing for something fresh and different by story ten, while the latter has, if it was written well, my attention to the story's bitter, sweet, or simply, or not so simply - which is far, far better - bittersweet end.

Any reader that cracks open this wide ranging collection of Twain's writing (it spans his creative lifetime) will find generous helpings of all three.  Many are funny as all get out, The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County being an excellent example of Twain's mastery of regional American humor.  Others are not, the heart wrenching A Dog's Tale a perfect illustration of Twain's ability to bring a tear to the eye and a lump to the throat every bit as easily as he could bring a smile to the face.

While I recommend reading the entire book to get a feel for Twain's writing, if doing so seems to be a rather daunting task, then I can offer up these choice yarns (please include the aforementioned yarns, as well) for an evening of quality reading: The Story of the Bad Little Boy, Cannibalism in the Cars, Niagara, The Story of the Good Little Boy, any story featuring the McWilliamses in its title, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed, Extracts from Adam's Diary, Eve's Diary, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,  A Double-Barreled Detective Story, A Horse's Tale, The $30,000 Bequest, The War Prayer (with Twain's cutting commentary still relevant today), and, last but far from least, Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, which contains the best description of Heaven that I have ever had the pleasure to read.

The Halloween Tree - by Ray Bradbury

Eight friends share a magical trip through time, experiencing the history of Halloween while trying to save the life of their best and most cherished friend, Pipkin.

If you have any interest in Halloween whatsoever, then Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree is essential reading.  The book might even become an annual reading tradition, not unlike revisiting one of the countless adaptations of Dickens A Christmas Carol, if not the original text itself, come Christmastime.

Bradbury's novel is an ode to one of the most popular cultural observations there is; although it really isn't a true holiday, as no one gets the day off.  I think Christmas is the only one that is more popular than Halloween.  I'm sure that the more religiously conservative out there will smile and nod and say, "Just as it should be."

Yes, jingle bells, talking snowmen, mistletoe, and chestnuts roasting over an open fire are all well and fine.  But they do not hold a candle to black cats, ghosts, goblins, jack o' lanterns, and cackling witches.  It's all just too much fun and, as Bradbury so artfully reveals, it cannot be contained to one night or one country, and it never has been.  The lengthy and multi-cultural history of what we call Halloween is beautifully illustrated in the beloved author's trademarked poetic prose.  Also covered is Bradbury's now overly familiar examination of the bittersweet, melancholic reality of the seeming endless magic of childhood (to the child, that is) meeting its inevitable end.

I don't really want to get into more details, for that would ruin the experience of reading Bradbury's novel and discovering that dark and foreboding, yet also oddly comforting, undiscovered country for yourself.  There is still plenty of time to grab a copy of the book and tear into it like the child you once were (or perhaps still are) would tear into that bucket of trick or treat candy.  My suggestion is to get yourself two copies, because you are going to want to share The Halloween Tree with all of your own friends.

Sometimes A Great Notion - by Ken Kesey

The Stampers are a rugged clan of Oregonian loggers that live by patriarch Henry Stamper's fierce n' fighting motto Never Give An Inch.  While the union loggers on the other side of the Wakonda Auga River are on strike, the Stamper's continue to do business and thus weaken the collective bargaining power of the town union.  Tension between the Stampers and the union are near the breaking point.

Walking into the middle of this tense stand-off is Leland Stamper, the youngest of Henry's children.  Leland has not only never managed to crawl, much less walk, out from under the huge shadow of his Herculean half-brother Hank, he has also never forgiven Hank for the incestuous relationship he had with Leland's mother.  Leland has returned to destroy Hank once and for all.

Those are the two primary stories in Ken Kesey's huge, sprawling novel Sometimes a Great Notion, but there are countless sub-plots, philosophical musings and wanderings, and simple moments of artistic showmanship filling its rambunctious 600 pages.  It amazes me that the film version managed to whittle this sprawling mess of novel down to its essential moments and still remain quite faithful to Kesey's core story. 

Having grown up watching countless syndicated broadcasts of the film version, I was delighted to find that a great deal of the novel's dialog and most of its key events had been faithfully translated to the screen.  But while the film version had the novel's essentials, it was missing its essence.  Not unlike John Huston's adaptation of Moby Dick.  All the essential stuff is there, but the essence of Melville's equally huge and sprawling novel, one also filled with countless philosophical musings and artistic wanderings, is missing.  To truly know what makes a great book great, you will have to crack it open and read it.

It has been a long time since I have enjoyed the simple experience of reading a book, of finding something unique and/or spectacular in just about every other sentence or paragraph that my eyes moved over.  From a strictly narrative standpoint Kesey's novel could be (and has been) considered an LCD induced mess.  But I think the book is less about the working of its dual simple man versus the elements/the system and biblical brother versus brother plot lines and more about exploring the people, events, and habitat that births them.  Each and every character, no matter how seemingly insignificant to the story they may or may not appear to be, is treated as an important figure.  Every last one of them are given such a microscopically detailed history that it brings the town of Wakonda to such vibrant life I felt that I had grown-up and lived my entire life there.  By the novel's end I felt as if I were leaving an actual place that I did not want to leave.  Even after 600 pages I still wanted to hang out some more and find out what finally happened to good old Hank Stamper and his brother Leland.  (Don't worry, the primary plot lines are both resolved, but the novel has ending rather similar to that of Homer's The Odyssey.)

If the big, sprawling writing for the simple goddamn joy of reading it style of book is your kind of thing, then I highly recommend reading Sometimes a Great Notion.

The Sea Wolf - by Jack London

Humphrey Van Weyden finds his situation going from bad to nightmarish when, after the ferry steamer that is taking him across the fog shrouded San Francisco bay sinks and he is swept out to sea, he is rescued by the crew of the seal hunting schooner Ghost.  Rather than allow Van Weyden to return to shore, the Captain of the Ghost, the monstrous Wolf Larsen, forces the bookish man to become a mate aboard his vessel.  Van Weyden soon finds himself fighting for his life among the brutal crew and waging a bitter battle of ideals with the loathsome Larsen.

A comment made by a friend of mine while watching the climax of The Dark Knight repeatedly came to mind while reading The Sea Wolf.  She made it when, after the umpteenth time, Batman yet again spared the life of the clearly psychotic and unrepentantly evil Joker.  Unable to hold in the disgust that had slowly been building inside her for the last two hours, she audibly snarled, "Just kill the son of a bitch already!"  I thought the very same thing time and time again while reading the last fifty or so pages of The Sea Wolf.  I haven't found myself so disgusted with a weak and ineffectual "hero" since I was subjected to the rancid idiocy that was Octopus.  If you have not seen it, then consider yourself to be very, very lucky...and just skip to the sequel, Octopus 2: River of Fear.  It's just as bad and every bit as stupid as the first, only it manages to be the fun kind of bad and stupid.

But I digress from London's novel, which is one you might get assigned in an American Literature course taught by someone smart enough to avoid assigning the turgid epic Moby-Dick.  London's yarn has more action than Melville's bloated novel and a far more interesting and easy to understand, albeit unresolved, battle between good and evil.  The novel's failure as "art" rests on London's unfortunate error of having Van Weyden be far too weak, both physically and intellectually, to ever effectively defeat Larsen, whose strength, both physical and intellectual, is omnipotent.  Van Weyden is a mere man, while Larsen is a God among men.  A vicious, murdering brute of a God. 

London clearly admires his anti-hero and his Objectivist leanings (I think that Ayn Rand would have loved this guy) to such a degree that he cannot have his gentle, human hero defeat him.  London instead relies on a weak deus ex machina that allows Van Weyden and his love interest's philosophical and moral hands to remain clean and untainted by the true dirty work of being human.  Thus the philosophical debate between the two is never resolved satisfactorily, which just leaves a story filled with brutal and exciting action scenes and a short, sweet love story that London drops in when he realizes that he has hit an intellectual dead end in Van Weyden and Larsen's War of Ideas.  He cannot pick a side to truly must triumph over the other on the terms he has set (which clearly favor Larsen from scene one) and that lack of intellectual resolution kept me from fully enjoying The Sea Wolf, and it keeps from recommending it to other readers.

Farewell Summer - by Ray Bradbury

The glorious, magical, and mystical summer that was chronicled in Dandelion Wine has finally come to its end. But young Douglas Spaulding, his younger brother Tom, and his friends refuse to say Farewell Summer.  They go as far as to declare war on time itself and vow to never grow up or old.  The youngsters declaration of hostilities draws the attention of the elderly Calvin C. Quartermain, who rallies together his friends to defy the defiant youngsters.

While Ray Bradbury's Farewell Summer is a short novel, a scant 200 pages in length, it is filled to overflowing with both the passion of living and of having lived.  It's about growing up, growing old, and preparing to pass from this mortal coil.  That Bradbury himself has reached an age wherein he could depart at any given moment (although, truth be told, so could anyone of us) only gives his bittersweet narrative more emotional heft.  Farewell Summer could only have been written by Bradbury, but it could also only have been written at this particular time in his life and career.  It could very well be his heartfelt farewell to his constant readers.

Quite a few sections in the novel's final 50 pages moved me to tears as Bradbury perfectly captured the emotional nuances of his characters, both young and old, coming to awareness of the harsh albeit beautiful truths of living.  Each page drips with Bradbury's trademarked melancholy, poetic use of language, and his phantasmagorical imagery.  No matter what time of the year you may read Farewell Summer (and you really, really should) it will make you feel as if the days are just beginning to grow shorter, the shadows longer, that the leaves are dying and falling to the ground, and that Halloween is lurking just around the corner, getting ready to say "Boo!"  A perfect time in which to say, Farewell Summer.

Slapstick - by Kurt Vonnegut

In the Green Death ravaged ruins of what was once Manhattan, Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, former pediatrician and the last President of the United States, pens his autobiography on Continental Driving School stationery.

Hi ho.

It's hard to believe that Kurt Vonnegut has finally moved on to the Turkey Farm, but he has and he is sorely missed.  Both by myself and countless others that have enjoyed his unique and hilarious melancholy laden stories.

So it goes.

Slapstick is one of those books that is difficult for me to review, because it reveals just how limited I am in my critical abilities.  It's smarter than I am by a sizable margin.  Reading Vonnegut is an experience that is hard for me to explain or describe.  He grips my heart and squeezes it to the point of inducing pain, all the while tickling my funny bone with razor sharp jokes that perfectly illustrate how life is just a series of mistakes that takes one by surprise.  "History is merely a list of surprises," Swain says at one point.  "It can only prepare us to be surprised again."  The surprise in Vonnegut's narrative world view is that no one (save for the central character) ever notices that life is just series of mishaps.

Hi ho.

The humor in Vonnegut's novel(s) is the reader's protective barrier against the pain that lives in the center of the story.  If that barrier were ever removed, then the story would become far too painful to endure.  This is wonderfully illustrated when Wilbur and Eliza, having lived a dreamlike life of joyous isolation and telepathic genius, make the mistake of thinking that revealing their true nature to their clueless parents and guardians will make things better for everyone.

It doesn't.

So it goes.

And perhaps  it was that very mistake, one that ended their own perfect world, that would lead to the very end of humankind.  Wilbur and Eliza are Adam and Eve, their isolated mansion is their Garden of Eden, and their eventual decision to reveal their genius is the fall that casts them out of their Garden and into a harsh and uncaring world.  One that they are ill-equipped to live in, no matter how smart they might be when allowed to join together in the almost incestuous love of their telepathic genius.

The sub-title for Slapstick is Lonesome No More!  I am fairly certain that all of Wilbur's actions, up to and including the creation of an artificial mass family for all Americans, are rooted in the loss of his sister and desire to return to the state of ignorant grace that was their childhood.  But what is done cannot ever be undone, and the comedic tragedy that is life must to play out in all its chaotic goofiness, one mistake after another.

So it goes.

Vonnegut is gone, off to an eternity at the Turkey Farm.  But his books remain for us to read and enjoy, and they are every bit as vibrant and relevant today as when they were written oh so many years ago.  So go read one.  Just don't be surprised that you weep while you chuckle.  That was the sad and funny genius of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut.

Hi ho.

The Ruins - by Scott Smith

Eric, Stacy, Jeff, and Amy are all celebrating their recent college graduation with a vacation in Cancun, Mexico.  During their stay the group befriends an English speaking German named Mathias and a trio of non-English speaking Greeks, who call themselves Pablo, Don Quixote, and Juan.  Mathias has a brother named Henrich, who has followed a romantic attachment into the jungle to investigate some Mayan ruins.  Mathias intends to visit his brother at those ruins, to check up on him, and invites Eric, Stacy, Jeff, and Amy to come along.  The group agrees, and so does Pablo, in the hope that they will have one last memorable adventure before starting their lives back home.

What the travelers find at their destination isn't an adventure, it's a nightmare...

WARNING: Although I always try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, my critique of The Ruins, by necessity, will touch upon events that could ruin (no pun intended) some of the surprises the novel holds for the first time reader.  If you plan to read the book regardless of what I think of it, just know that I did not care for it all that much and do not read the paragraphs that follow until after you've read the book.

Now that you have been suitably warned, on with my review:

Scott Smith's novel The Ruins can best be summed up as follows, "Imagine if George Romero had adapted Stephen King's short story The Raft as a Night of the Living Dead style homage to The Day of the Triffids."  Now, two of those comparisons will give the genre savvy reader far too much information as to what kind of read they will be in for, but life is filled with such disappointments and, sad as it is for me to say, The Ruins qualifies as a major one.  Then again, I wasn't all that impressed with Smith's first novel, or its film version, either.  (I stopped reading A Simple Plan when I realized I didn't care one bit about whether or not the narrator got the stupid money, and I only watched the film version because Sam Raimi had directed it.)  Maybe it's just me, but I liked both King's and Romero's versions of this grim-and-gory style story a lot better than Smith's.

The marketing for the book has been quite coy about revealing that The Ruins is not only a horror novel, but a horror novel that has an honest to goodness monster as its central threat.  As far as monster novels go, The Ruins could be best described as adequate.  It digs under your skin, but it doesn't do anything particularly unique while doing so.  If you have read the aforementioned Stephen King short story, The Raft, then you have already read a shorter, scarier, and far less grueling (grueling in a bad way) version of this novel. 

Once the nature of the threat is revealed, The Ruins forgoes any further attempt at building suspense and instead focuses on just how horrible things become for the group.  And things get very, very horrible indeed.  Smith, who narrates the story in a manner so detached that it is almost clinical, doesn't flinch away from the gruesome fate that awaits many of his characters.  He relishes in describing every small, disgusting detail.  While what happens to the group is unsettling to the point of being horrific, the novel never becomes truly frightening.

Like many other contemporary horror stories, The Ruins overflows with xenophobia (whatever you do, do not leave the safety of this country and venture into foreign lands) and torture (physical, as well as psychological).  It also overflows with some logic defying moments, such as the characters repeatedly chasing after a cell phone that, despite being at the bottom of a shaft that seems to be fifty feet deep, at least, can still work days after its battery should had been drained of any and all power.  Not to mention the simple fact that it's still working in that location.  Hell, my own cell phone doesn't work in certain rooms of my apartment, and I live well above the ground.  Obviously I chose the wrong service provider.

Considering how simple its story structure is, it came as no surprise to hear that a film version of The Ruins is currently in preproduction.  A March 2008 release date has been scheduled, but I think I'll just wait for the DVD.

Cat Tales: Classic Stories from Favorite Writers - Edited and with Photographs by Robin Upward

A collection of short stories and essays about that enigmatic and fanciful household companion known as the cat.

The back cover blurb for Cat Tales describes the anthology as "The Perfect Gift for the Literary Cat Lover, Gorgeously Illustrated with Full-Color Photography,"  which is as good a description as any, I guess.  The contributing authors, Anton Chekov, Saki, Mark Twain, and Emile Zola, to name but a few, are all renowned and respected literary figures, so those wanting good cat stories won't put the book down disappointed.  Robin Upward's photographs are an "ah" and "ooh" inducing collection of cute and cuddly pet portraits, so those just wanting to see a variety of breeds in a variety of cute pictures won't put the book down disappointed, either.

I think it's a reasonable assumption that Cat Tales was designed to adorn the top of a coffee table, or to be placed in another location where someone would be passing the time and find his or her self in need of some quick reading or visual stimulation to keep from becoming bored.  With the exception of Stephen Vincent Benet's The King of the Cats, which is twenty pages long and not even about a real cat, but a musical conductor with a tail, the stories and essays are short and easy reads.  Lewis Carroll's The Cheshire Cat really isn't a self-contained story, just the segments of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that feature the spectral character.  Anton Chekov's Who Is To Blame? tells of an ill tempered teacher's disastrous attempt to train a kitten to hunt mice.  Colette's The Long-Cat shows how the saying "No good deed goes unpunished" also applies to cats.  Rose Fyleman's A Persian Tale, the anthology's shortest offering, reveals the mystical origins of the titular breed.  Charles Perrault's Puss In Boots explains how receiving a cat as an inheritance can be a very rewarding thing.  Saki's Tobermory will no doubt have most of its readers seriously rethinking the notion that granting their pets the ability to speak would be a good thing.  Marguerite Steen's Little White King is just a collection of observations of a very special kitten discovering the world around it.  If King's final line doesn't pluck at you heartstrings, then you don't have any.  Mark Twain then shares the hilarious story of how Dick Baker's Cat came to detest quartz mining.  Emile Zola closes the book with a study of The Paradise of Cats.

"The literature of the cat is vast," states animal loving author Cleveland Amory in his introduction.  I'm sure any cat loving visitor will appreciate that these choice morsels have been left out to enjoy.

Big Woods: The Hunting Stories - by William Faulkner

Four tales of hunting game in the ever shrinking "Big Woods" of Mississippi.

Of course, these stories being the work of William Faulkner, there is a whole lot more involved than just boys coming of age, and the old men they eventually become realizing all that was has passed away in the decaying wilds of Mississippi.  These stories ache with the human condition itself.  Don't ask me what that means.  If you crack open any one of Faulkner's works and read, you will feel that deep, somber ache.  It's even in his funny ones. 

The four stories collected in Big Woods span two generations.  Each tale captures a crucial moment - or several moments - in time when life in the Big Woods changed irrevocably.  Some can be both seen and experienced, as in The Bear.  Others are noticed after the fact, as in the haunting and melancholic conclusion of Race at Morning, a tale that also contains a priceless laugh-out-loud moment of comedy.

The collection opens with the original version of The Bear, Faulkner's most famous "short" story.  (It's more of a short novel, really.)  This version of the tale does not have the stream of consciousness section that those who have read Go Down, Moses would be familiar with.  Its removal, while stealing some grandeur from the writing, makes for a far more accessible read.  Faulkner turns what is, at first, a routine coming-of-age story into something that is much, much more.  Through the hunting down, and thus eventual and unavoidable killing, of Old Ben, the bear of the story, Faulkner creates a powerful symbol/metaphor for the untamed wildness that is, even in the "back then" of the story's time frame, being destroyed.  When the inevitable happens, it isn't the cathartic release the story seems to have been building up to, it is actually a somber and tragic thing.  The Big Woods lose something that can never be regained, as do the characters.

The three shorter stories that follow feel, at times, like echoes of that traumatic event.  The Old People takes an early moment from The Bear and uses to craft both a touching story about when Sam Fathers first moved to Major De Spain's hunting camp, as well as tell the uplifting coming-of-age story that The Bear isn't.  A Bear Hunt is a humorous interlude wherein an irritating blowhard's case of the hiccups leads to a hilarious act of revenge.  Race At Morning follows a man and the youth he has taken under his arm, as they give desperate chase to fell a buck that, somehow, has managed to dodge every hunters' bullet.  As I mentioned before, while the story is laugh out loud funny, it ends on a haunting and melancholic note.  While a balance has been struck, it is only temporary, and a way of life, one that the reader has been able to live through two generations in the stories that preceded it, is finally acknowledged as having died.  Any reader of the book can tell you, it died with Old Ben.

Yes, Faulkner is every bit as dense and impenetrable as you have heard.  But the old cliche of great stories not being written, but having been re-written, holds true with reading.  Great stories should not be read, they should be re-read.  Much like the Big Woods of its title, Faulkner's work is a dense forest of myth, metaphor, and meaning.  This collection is an excellent place to start before attempting to navigate the serpentine complexities of either The Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom!  But, no matter where you chose to begin, it is a journey well worth taking, and one that should be made repeatedly.

Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre - Edited by Tim Lieder

Eleven tales of fear, obsession, and killer clowns.  (According to the title page, that is.)

On its web page Dybbuk Press states that its intended goal is to publish "strange and innovative" fiction, with emphasis placed on horror (that'd be the "strange" side, I'd wager) and experimental writing (being the "innovative" side, naturally).  Dybbuk's premiere effort is an anthology entitled Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre and while the stories collected within are certainly strange (and entertaining, for the most part), they are also far from innovative.

In a previous review I commented about my issue with reading theme anthologies.  How reading one short story after another about the same subject gets old to me, and fast.  Oddly enough, I had the opposite problem with Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre, because the anthology is a collection of short stories put together with no editorial comment whatsoever, not even contributors bios.  This made the book a somewhat uneven read at first, because I could not understand what kind of anthology it was I was reading.  Horror?  Humor?  Both?  Neither?  I wish editor Tim Lieder would have given me some sort of clue as to what to expect in an introduction, at least.

But what about the stories?  They are the usual mix of classics and clunkers.  On the classic side, there are Cameron Hill's Hermetic Crab (about a novice magician and his hermit crab familiar), Rob Steussi's Head Drippers (a sane man's intellectual exercise at an asylum leads to an insane discovery about the place), and Michael Stone's Clob (wherein a shy man's "imaginary friend" gives some much needed assist in the girl meeting department).  All three are more than worth the price of book.  The clunkers are C.C. Parker's Formaldehyde (a hodgepodge of slackers, murder and corpse play), Trina Shealy Orton's Brilliant Suspension (an anonymous character undergoes a magical, albeit torturous, transformation) and Rats, Wrong Alley by Tim Johnson (mutant guess whats).  These three stories, while not "bad," really needed to spend a little more time cooking in the idea oven.  The middle range stories are Paul Haines Doof Doof Doof (one of those post-modern twists on the Fairy Tale characters we grew up reading about), Roberta Rogow's Peppercorn Rent (a playful yarn about a strange rental agreement and a young woman's rather animalistic monthly visitor), Brian Rosenberger's Something Funny Is Going On (the killer you know what story), and William Brock's Berries Under Snow (a somber examination of frustrated and/or spurned love - and a perfect closer for the anthology).  Jenifer Jourdanne's modestly amusing non-fiction ramblings, Blue Elephants, is the only writing that does not have some sort of connection to horror, science-fiction or fantasy and, while reading it, I could only wonder what the hell it was doing in this anthology, because it doesn't belong.

Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre gets Dybbuk Press off to a somewhat promising start.  Each of the contributing writers shows promise and I'm pretty sure, if they stick to it, their work will start showing up in more widely distributed magazines and anthologies.  If they already have, then clearly I need to diversify my reading.  I'm missing some good stuff.

A Christmas Carol and Other Stories - by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol and Other Stories (The World's Best Reading).  Three short stories by Charles Dickens, wherein spirits intercede in troubled human affairs.

A Christmas Carol: On Christmas Eve, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the spirit of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley.  Marley does not want Scrooge to suffer the same horrible fate in the afterlife as he, so Marley has arranged for three specific ghosts to visit Scrooge.  The Ghost of Christmas Past will reveal the forgotten joys and the unfortunate sorrows of Scrooge's youth.  The Ghost of Christmas Present will give Scrooge a glimpse of the joyous celebrations of those around him on this glorious day.  The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows Scrooge the fate that awaits him and others if he does not change his ways.

The Chimes: On New Year's Eve, Toby "Trotty" Veck is called to by the Goblins of the Chimes.  It seems that Trotty has made an offensive mistake on the last day of the year.  The horrible Alderman Cute had spoken cruelly of the New Year's Day wedding plans of Trotty's beloved daughter, Margaret, and her fiance, Richard.  Trotty did nothing to speak out in defense of the union.  The Goblins send a Spirit to show Trotty the tragic end result of his inaction.

The Cricket on the Hearth: John and Mary "Dot" Peerybingle seem to have a loving and happy marriage.  The elderly and impoverished toymaker Caleb Plummer has done too good a job off hiding the harsh realities of life from his blind daughter, Bertha.  The mean-spirited Tackleton, a toy merchant who employs Caleb and Bertha, is a bitter old soul who will be marrying May Fielding, a friend of Dot's.  When they all attend a pre-wedding picnic and Dot speaks a tad too frankly about the advanced ages of her husband and May's fiance, Tackleton revenges himself by making a devastating revelation to John Peerybingle.

I really don't know what I could say about Dickens A Christmas Carol that hasn't already been said elsewhere.  This one hundred and sixty-two plus year old story is recognized as the definitive Christmas story. (After the biblical account of Christ's birth, of course.)  The only other written story that I can think of that has even come close to touching up the dangling threads of Carol's fame is the Dr. Seuss story How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  Everything else is either a movie (It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and, most recently, Bob Clark's A Christmas Story) or animated Children's Specials, including the aforementioned Dr. Seuss story.  I think that it is safe to say that there will never be another written work that will become such a well known part of Christmas as Dickens's tale has.

Being a short story, A Christmas Carol is very easy to adapt into either a stage play, or a movie (which, truth be told, is where most people recognize the characters and their dialog - "Bah!  Humbug!" or "God bless us, everyone.") and, even when the production makes radical changes to the story, the characters, their motivation, and the overall story remains consistent.  There is a reason for this, rather than use the Yuletide setting as an evangelical tool, Dickens praised the human spirit's tendency to joy and generosity at this time of year, and that speaks to all of us, everyone.  I do think that the actual story should be read at least once, instead of just curling up and watching one of its countless cinematic versions.  But if you must watch a movie version, then watch the Alastair Sim version, it's regarded as the best of the bunch.

I had never of The Chimes, after reading it, I could understand why.  It's just a somewhat darker retread of A Christmas Carol, this time on New Year's Eve.  Trotty is no Scrooge, though.  He's far too kind-hearted for one thing.  Also the matter of all the suffering caused by his daughter following the advice of Alderman Cute and not marrying her "One True Love" is rather outside of his sphere of influence.  While being a Dickens story makes it worth reading on some level, on another its one of those Dickens stories that, if you skip it, you won't be missing all that much.

The Cricket on the Hearth is the one story that is not directly linked to any kind of holiday.  But, with its tale of impending nuptials interrupted and fidelity doubted, it would make for a splendid Valentine's Day read.  Be warned though, the ending is so sickly sweet that it is like eating a five pound box of See's Chocolates in one sitting.

This "World's Best Reading" edition not only gives the reader what the afterward calls the Greatest Little Book in the World (i.e. the Christmas Story that is considered responsible for the contemporary Christmas tradition of making merry and literalizing "Good will toward men."), but a story to help ring in the New Year and a tale to encourage the cherishing and celebration of love.  It's an excellent literary investment to make.

The New Roger Caras Treasury of Great Cat Stories

Thirty-five tales about cats of all types: good, bad, and, being cats after all, indifferent.

It took me forever to read The New Roger Caras Treasury of Great Cat Stories, not because it is bad, far from it.  I just have a problem with reading theme anthologies.  I quickly get bored reading story after story about the same subject, and The New Treasury contains five hundred pages of cat stories, which is far too much feline fiction for me to focus on for any length of time.  So I read a story or two here and there in between other books, rather than plow through The Treasury in one big gulp.  I can only recommend that you do the same, unless you really adore cat stories, that is.

While each story in the anthology is connected by having a cat either as its focus or as an important character, the nature of the tales themselves veers wildly from from whimsical to serious, from outlandish to realistic, with a touch of non-fiction.  Being a long time horror/fantasy/sci-fi buff, I appreciated the contributions of Fritz Leiber (The Cat Hotel), Ursula K. LeGuin (Schrodinger's Cat), Andre Norton (Noble Warrior), Mercedes Lackey (Skitty) and, most of all, Charlotte Macleod (A Long Time Sitting) and Elizabeth Moon (Clara's Cat).  On the whimsical side, Susan Shwartz offers Asking Mr. Bigelow and Carole Nelson Douglas the P.I. parody The Maltese Double Cross.  The literary offerings include such choice tales as Cornelia Nixon's Affection, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's Chicago and the Cat, and Merrill Joan Gerber's Touching Is Good for Living Creatures.  Those yearning for some true cat stories have Cleveland Amory's A Cat for All Seasons, James Harriot's Oscar the Socialite Cat (my favorite of the bunch), and editor Roger Caras's Teddy's Tale.  There are quite a few more picks in the litter, but I will let you, if you so choose to, discover those by reading and enjoying the anthology for yourself.  Besides, tastes and opinions vary by a sizable margin.

My only real complaint about The New Roger Caras Treasury of Great Cat Stories is the absence of two classic cat tales: Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat and H.P. Lovecraft's The Cats of Ulthar.  Both deserve to be included in the anthology.  Then again, this book is The NEW Roger Caras Treasury of Great Cat Stories and, perhaps, those tales were collected in the OLD Roger Caras' Treasury of Great Cat Stories.  Perhaps I'll hunt that collection down some day and check.