McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thriling Tales - Various Authors

As the introduction explains, McSweeney's editor Dave Eggers permitted fellow writer Michael Chabon to guest edit an issue of the quarterly and fill it with adventure (or otherwise thrilling) stories, which Chabon feels are regrettably underrated these days. The result - here put into book form - is a very inconsistent mix of tales, none of which are very thrilling, from a number of well known authors (Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Sherman Alexie, and both Chabon and Eggers). Most of it seems extremely uninspired, if not unfinished, as if - in response to Chabon's solicitations - the writers churned out whatever slop first came to their minds and sent it off. But within the 'treasury' are a few worthwhile pieces - namely, Dave Egger's "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" (which can also be found in his book How We Are Hungry); Rick Moody's long, apocalyptic vision of drug use and memory, "The Albertine Notes"; and Chabon's "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance" (although it claims to be the beginning to a larger work, and thus seems incomplete). One would probably be better off seeking out these stories in other places, as the rest of the compilation is not worth reading.

BOOOOOOOO!
1.5 out of 5
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Cathedral - Raymond Carver

This poignant collection of stories from a Northwestern author are steeped in genuine experience - in failure, struggle, and common human interactions. The premises are surprisingly strange: in the title story, a man admits his uncertainty about meeting a blind man, only to find a strange sort of comfort in the new experience. But in scenarios such as this, Carver avoids both didacticism and sentimentality; his subtle, unpretentious language simply shows, with almost haunting honesty, a very real world. The characters within his barren situations are full of doubts and weakness (in 'Careful,' a man convinces himself that it's ok to drink Champange straight from the bottle in the afternoon by himself), have little aspirations, and make errors - in other words, they are very authentic. Each of these twelve short works offers a unique glimpse of both the emptiness and possibility of life.

Worth Reading
3.5 out of 5
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Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Spanning nearly two decades and covering the breadth of Vonnegut's topics, Welcome to the Monkey House is inconsistent in both style and quality. The stories very from the inane domestic scenarios of 'Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son' and 'Long Walk to Forever' (clearly aimed at the postwar housewife) to weird science fiction comedies, including 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.' The latter type are mostly concerned with overpopulation and the morality of scientific advancement, two issues he seems to have dwelled heavily on in those years. In this collection, frequent Vonnegut readers will find familiar characters (e.g. band director George Helmholtz) and ideas seen in other works, such as volunteer suicide and compulsory handicaps. A couple of the pieces are terribly boring, a few are highly original and amusing, and the story 'Harrison Bergeron' is one of the few examples of a written work that improved in its adaptation to film.

Um?
2.5 out of 5
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Babylon Revisited and Other Stories - F. Scott Fitzgerald

As the title hints, this collection of ten short stories, which were written between 1920 and 1937, has a thick strand of sentimentalism running through tis course. Though all are well written (it's Fitzgerald) few stand out as particularly strong or original, and the ones that do (e.g. 'A Diamond as Big as the Ritz') do so because they are not about a person missing people or places. Fitzgerald's long descriptive sentences and obsession with possibility (both past and future) creates the usual dynamic and believable cast of big money New England educated characters. Most of the stories sit heavily on the "coming of age" theme, which might explain why I liked the book much more when I read it in high school. Babylon Revisited would be better if read over an extended duration of time; power reading it in a few days as we did left the stories repetitive and stripped them of their power as individuals. Not as much fun as Six Tales of the Jazz Age or The Pat Hobby Stories, but an impressive work nonetheless and a must read for Fitzgerald enthusiasts.

WORTH THE READ
3 out of 5
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