Critical Compendium » Anthology

Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers, edited by Susan Morrison

“Cookies and teas; headbands and helmet hair; Gennifer Flowers and Tammy Wynette; cleavage and perhaps a soupçon of Botox. “Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary,” an impressive if somewhat exhausting anthology about the first feasible female presidential contender, is a prism focused almost exclusively on such familiar emblems of the domestic realm — not welfare reform, but the inner confines of the White House.” Read the review at the New York Times.

Filed under: Anthology, Nonfiction, Politics | Posted 02.13.08 | Comments: None

My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides

“Don’t be put off by the strange title, which Jeffrey Eugenides plucked from the Latin poet Catullus’s verse bemoaning having to share his lover’s attention with her pet sparrow. It’s the only off note in this otherwise irresistible anthology of 27 love stories sure to make hearts flutter well beyond Valentine’s Day. My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead was edited by Eugenides at Dave Eggers’s behest, to benefit the Chicago chapter of 826 National, his writing programs for teens, a cause as worthy as amour.” Read the review at the Christian Science Monitor.

Filed under: Anthology, Fiction, Short stories | Posted 02.13.08 | Comments: None

Brooklyn Was Mine, edited by Chris Knutsen and Valerie Steiker

“Brooklyn isn’t Greenwich Village, but many writers — established and ascendant — are concentrated in a handful of low-rise neighborhoods there. In “Brooklyn Was Mine,” a collection of essays edited by Chris Knutsen and Valerie Steiker, some of the borough’s writers ruminate on arrival and domestic survival in this emerging haute bohemia. The jealous ownership implied by the word “mine” suggests that (à la Walt Whitman) to live in Brooklyn is both to claim possession of a milieu and to be possessed by it. The contributors make the place more sought after and, by a handy symbiosis, the place makes them cool.” Read the review at the New York Times.

Filed under: Anthology, Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 02.05.08 | Comments: None

Science Fiction Omnibus, edited by Brian Aldiss

“Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus, now re-issued with additional contributions from recent writers, mixing celebrated names (J. G. Ballard, Frederick Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Aldiss himself) with those that are less well known. The imaginative scope of this updated collection is a reminder that the energy of science fiction shows no sign of fading. There are good reasons for looking again at what the genre has to offer.” Read the review at the Times Literary Supplement.

Filed under: Anthology, Fiction, Science fiction | Posted 02.02.08 | Comments: None

Wastelands: Stories of Life After Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams

“Wastelands: Stories of Life After Apocalypse collects 23 stories that range in publication dates from 1973 to 2006. Some of the stories have aged more gracefully than others. The questions raised by the powerful allegory of death envisioned as total Apocalypse fall by the wayside as editor John Joseph Adams gives too much leeway to the biggest stars of the speculative fiction world. As it is, I can wholly recommend half of the stories collected here. Wastelands ultimately fails as a collection because its editor did not allow a cohesive philosophy to guide his choices for the collection.” Read the review at Bookslut.

Filed under: Anthology, Fiction, Short stories | Posted 01.19.08 | Comments: None

Havana Noir, edited by Achy Obejas

“Havana Noir is an anthology of short stories — grim, bleak, escapist, violent, sexually charged — set in the collection’s namesake city. The compiled stories are organized into four parts — I: Sleepless in Havana, II: Escape to Nowhere, III: Sudden Rage, IV: Drowning in Silence. Beside the title of each of the short stories is the name of the neighborhood in which the protagonists live, breathe, screw, die, kill and dream — Chinatown, Centro Habana, Alamar, Malecón…” Read the review at Bookslut.

Filed under: Anthology, Fiction, Short stories | Posted 01.19.08 | Comments: None

Memory: An Anthology, edited by Harriet Harvey Wood and A.S. Byatt

“William Maxwell called memory “a form of storytelling … in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw”. John Stuart Mill thought it “the present consciousness of a past sensation”. The science contributors to this anthology locate the various functions of memory in different areas of the brain. Whatever it may be, and wherever it may reside, it is the single human function that has provoked speculation from Plato through St Augustine – both given due attention here – to Jane Austen, Tennyson, Virginia Woolf and the cognitive scientists and psychologists of today. That shower of names may give some flavour of the book’s scope. In fact, it is hard to do justice in a review to the range and depth of a collection which aligns brief sound-bites – Lewis Carroll, Anthony Powell – with entries that run over several pages.” Read the review at the Financial Times.

Filed under: Anthology, Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science | Posted 01.18.08 | Comments: None

Four Letter Word: New Love Letters, edited by Joshua Knelman and Rosalind Porter

‘This anthology of short fiction is a wonderfully varied exercise in creativity. Without doubt, love looks different in the 21st century: harder, more disposable, subject to the whims of the mobile phone and internet technology, which is ironically frequently referred to here. Love at its most sublime is expressed in short spurts, or through a filter of cynicism. This is not the collection for those in pursuit of screaming romance.’ Read the review at the Guardian.

Filed under: Anthology, Fiction, Short stories | Posted 01.06.08 | Comments: None

The Best American Comics 2007, edited by Chris Ware

‘The comics collected in this book range fairly far and wide, but the strong center of gravity is plaintive tales of everyday life, set in the present, and usually about the social groups that comic artists themselves belong to. The appeal of such work is its emotional directness - in this age of highly branded, executive-produced cultural output, comics promise a more resonant and unadulterated link between creator and reader.’ Read the review at the New York Times.

Filed under: Anthology, Graphic novel, Nonfiction | Posted 12.24.07 | Comments: None

The Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens

‘The author of “God Is Not Great” seems to have won the battle for World’s Best Atheist (sorry, Richard Dawkins), and here has collected a far-reaching range of likeminded nonbelievers.’ Read the review at Time Out Chicago.

Filed under: Anthology, Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Religion, Science | Posted 12.20.07 | Comments: None

Flying to America: 45 More Stories, by Donald Barthelme, edited by Kim Herzinger

‘Flying to America’ caps a project by author and bookseller Kim Herzinger to bring Barthelme’s entire opus into print . . . “Flying to America” offers 15 previously uncollected stories, including three never before published, as well as 30 stories left out of Barthelme’s two self-selected anthologies, 60 Stories (1981) and 40 Stories (1987), where you’ll find his best-known work.’ Read the review at the Houston Chronicle.

Filed under: Anthology, Fiction, Short stories | Posted 12.14.07 | Comments: None

Rebel Journalism: The Writings of Wilfred Burchett, edited by George Burchett and Nick Shimmin

‘Along with John Pilger, Wilfred Burchett is arguably the most controversial journalist and war correspondent Australia has produced. Known to 20th-century conservative Australia as public enemy No1, to many on the Left Burchett was regarded as a courageous rebel who, most often, reported conflicts from behind enemy lines or, at least, from the other side. This annotated anthology of Burchett’s writings from World War II until his death in 1983 is topped and tailed by his greatest scoop: reporting first-hand on the terrible effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.’ Read the review at the Australian.

Filed under: Anthology, Nonfiction | Posted 12.08.07 | Comments: None

Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine, edited by Barry C. Smith

‘The authors collected in “Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine,” all like (David) Hume great champions of self-improvement, address themselves to questions of subjectivity and taste, quantifiability and pleasure, perception and its objects, the role of knowledge and judgement in perceptual discernment, and the possibility of expertise in the arena of fine wine. They are mainly philosophers, but also winemakers and critics, linguists and biochemists.’ Read the review at the Times Literary Supplement.

Filed under: Anthology, Food, Nonfiction, Philosophy | Posted 11.29.07 | Comments: None

The Book of Other People, edited by Zadie Smith

‘Big names stud the list of contributors to this bold, inviting collection, and readers are bound to see these pages as a guide to the health of contemporary fiction. Zadie Smith explains in her introduction that each contributor was told to “make someone up,” and name the resulting story after that protagonist. Profits will go to Dave Eggers’ 826 NYC, a charity that promotes children’s literacy. So what do these writers, mostly young and fashionable – Hari Kunzru, Adam Thirlwell, David Mitchell – make of the commission?’ Read the review at the Independent. Buy the book at Amazon.com.

Filed under: Anthology, Fiction, Short stories | Posted 11.18.07 | Comments: None

Reporting Iraq: An Oral History of the War by the Journalists Who Covered It, edited by Mike Hoyt and John Palatella

‘For “Reporting Iraq,” the staff of the Columbia Journalism Review interviewed almost 50 reporters - mostly print but also a few broadcasters and local translators - and recorded their first-person perspectives on the conflict that has so bitterly divided the nation. Free from the constraints of objective journalism, the reporters hold nothing back and paint an almost uniformly bleak picture of life in post-Saddam Iraq.’ Read the review at the Houston Chronicle.

Filed under: Anthology, Essays, Nonfiction | Posted 11.15.07 | Comments: None

Law Lit: From Atticus Finch to ‘The Practice’: A Collection of Great Writing About the Law edited by Thane Rosenbaum

‘Lawyers are the most natural audience for the book, and the anthology includes a nice sampling of some of the most colorful practitioners in the canon. There is John Barth’s fictional member of the Maryland bar, Todd Andrews, who says: “winning or losing litigation is of no concern to me, and I think I’ve never made a secret of that fact to my clients.” But “Law Lit” isn’t preoccupied with answering the snide remark from Carl Sandburg, who pleaded, “tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a lawyer’s bones.” Read the review at the New York Sun.

Filed under: Anthology, Crime fiction, Fiction | Posted 11.09.07 | Comments: None