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, [...]
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 [...]
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.
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]