On "Had You Been a Believer, You'd Have Known You Were Headed for Hell" by Jessi Lee Gaylord (920 words) ***

This story bears mention for the title alone. Titles are tough, and I love it when an author can put one out there that manages to be original, totally unique, and somehow befitting the story. These are two ironists on their way to work, two people with a whole lot of smirk, and not much interest in stepping aside for others. But they're going to meet their end. Read the story here at Up the Staircase.

On "The Other Two" by Edith Wharton (7477 words) *****

Wharton's turns her attention to the life of a man who has married a twice-divorced woman. His discomfort, as it becomes clear during the early days of the marriage, with her previous husbands is hard to read about. Like most things we are handed in life, the husband learns simply to accept what has come before him--and even that these men are much better men than his wife ever let on. I have friends who are still friends with their ex-wives, who are even friends with their ex-wives' new husbands. Perhaps, our culture is slightly different now, the way that people so often remarry or even go from one boy/girlfriend to another, often dating someone a friend and acquaintance once slept with. Still, as a guy, I find myself more in tune with the man's discomfort in this story than with the seeming ease that various people I know seem to carry themselves in such situations. I suppose we all do have a tendency to make things look easy from the outside. Read Wharton's story here.

On "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells ***

I have not read much science fiction outside of the work of Philip K. Dick, who forged a reading list of mine a couple of years ago, so I've decided to embark on a reading list of classic science fiction.

I say I haven't read much, but in fact, I actually read quite a bit of the nineteenth-century science fiction (Jules Verne particularly comes to mind) when I was a kid. Forced to read one thousand pages per quarter from a select reading list, Verne and authors like him were often my staple. Had more contemporary science fiction books been on that list (and in the school library), I'd have definitely tried them. Thing is, I loved sci-fi--mostly because of Star Wars (something I probably wouldn't find myself drawn to as much as an adult, prequels notwithstanding)--or so I thought. But the few times I've read more contemporary stuff, I've usually been disappointed. I think that's because, as with sci-fi movies, while I like philosophical ideas and intense thrills, I'm not much for action. I'm more of an Alien fan than an Aliens fan, for instance.

So the reading list this time will include mostly those twentieth-century masters I haven't ever read, and I'm hoping they'll be interesting more for their ideas than for their action and, in addition, that they'll be at least fairly decently written. (The other issue I have with much genre fiction is the degree to which authors rely on cliches, but a good author, I've found, often doesn't, meaning that when younger, I often dismissed genre fiction out of hand when I should have considered each work separately, because as I discovered when reading a mystery list about a decade ago, there are some really brilliant genre writers out there. The classics are often classics for a reason, and I was wrong to be snooty about them.
 
The Time Machine, however, was a bit of a disappointment. I enjoyed the first few chapters, as Wells waxed poetic on ideas about physics that I would have thought postdated him (the connection between traveling through time and traveling through space, and the dynamics of the fourth dimension), but the story got rather hokey once the narrator headed off into the grand future.

Of course, the description of future was itself a social commentary. In it, humankind had evolved into two factions: a light and a dark, a good and an evil. But while the ones who lived above ground were peace loving, they had become so appeased with easy living that they failed any longer to advance. For Wells, this seemed a dangerous proposition. We must struggle if we are to evolve (there seemed a slight critique of communism here, as if the greed of capitalism is something we should want, as opposed to the peace communism would supposedly bring). But by the same token, those below ground had descended to the lowest rungs of decency, becoming essentially cannibals, even as they continued to use machinery.

Most of the plot revolves around the narrator's time machine being stolen and him attempting to recover it so that he can get back to his own time, a familiar plot indeed, though perhaps unique in Wells's time. The book is available online here.

On "Six Easy Pieces" by Pauls Toutonghi (409 words) ***

Taoutoghi short in six parts is a collection of highlights, involving psychology and cars. Small Doggies, where I first read this piece, tended to excel at these kind of pieces, short, lyrical passages that are fun to read just because of the order and choice of the words. I like how Toutonghi fits these six pieces together. You can now read the story here at Nailed.

On "Asperger Syndrome" by Brenda Smith Myles and Richard L. Simpson **

The subtitle of this book is "A Guide for Educators and Parents," and indeed that's what it is. Basic and fairly clear, it lays out what Asperger is and how it can best be managed in the context of education and of home. But it's vary utility and scope is also it's downfall, at least for me. Academic in its approach, I found my senses largely dulled, and wide as it was in scope, I found myself less interested in vast sections written specifically to educators. Still, it was a useful introduction to the phenomenon and one that I hope I can take with me as I read further into the topic.

What exactly Asperger is is, of course, part of the difficulty. It's easy to denote that it is high-functioning autism and that it involves more often an inability to read social cues than an inability to engage with the outside world at all (there's even some experts now who claim--though not in this book--that Asperger is in fact not even an aspect of autism but a wholly separate condition involving problems in another section of the brain). But diagnosing a person with the disability is a much more difficult thing, as every person is unique, and while many symptoms are shared by those who have Asperger, not all of them always are--or are to the same degree.

The child with Asperger can be very intelligent in some ways. The difficulty is generally in being able to filter his or her social interaction with others. Most are fairly withdrawn, preferring their own world to shared activities (my girlfriend's son, however, is an extrovert and so doesn't really fit many of these tendencies). Often, they have issues with stress and an inability to cope with such stress. They prefer structure and routine to disorder and can act in negative manners when such structure is interrupted. They can think and recall in very concrete manners but have difficulty interpreting actions or applying them to everyday life. So, for example, they might be able to read a book and tell you everything that happened in it, but drawing conclusions about what the events actually mean would be a struggle. Or they might learn that it's wrong to hit someone on the playground but then fail to be able to realize that such a rule applies also in the kitchen. (I'm reminded of Temple Grandin's book Thinking in Pictures, which does a much better job of explaining how such people might think. Memory is often very strong, but unable to group things into abstract concepts, such people often have trouble processing thoughts in at timely fashion and understanding how one specific item relates to another.)

While the education sections provide many tables and practical tips with regard to how to help Asperger children understand verbal and mathematical concepts, keep schedules, and interact with students (assign helpers, use visual cues along with written ones, etc.), the most interesting chapters to me where those closer to the book's end. Chapter 4, for instance, talks of transition to adulthood, which as the book unfortunately shows is a difficult process that many such children never manage to bridge, as evidenced by the unemployment rate among those with Asperger. Not only is the stress of major change difficult for such people to handle, but also, lacking often the ability to self-regulate, such people find it difficult to place themselves into situations that require independent living.

Chapter 5 proved to me the most interesting of the chapters. It essentially was a set of case studies--stories from families with children who have been diagnosed with Asperger. What is clear is that all of these children were very loved but that the disability definitely drained the resources of the parents and siblings and teachers. Many times this was because the diagnosis was arrived at only later in life. The first tale seemed especially tragic. It involve a girl who was fine living in her own world until she began to come to a better understanding around ages 6-8 of herself identity. At that point, unable to properly deal with others and friendless as a result, she began to act out in self-destructive ways that brought her attention and concern, which set up a repeating cycle of more and more dangerous acts and claims. The next three stories were luckily not quite as dour. In each, the family forged a plan and had a certain degree of outside help in terms of therapy for the child. The biggest challenge, it seemed, for one of these families was balancing the needs of their Asperger kid with those of the other children. In this case, they had to specifically set out time for the other children so that the one child didn't completely hog every bit of that time. Furthermore, having a person with Asperger syndrome in the family sometimes meant that even the siblings had trouble making friends, since other children didn't want to deal with the child with the disability. In each case, the degree of difficulty seemed to vary as well, with some children making seeming progress and others likely to continue on a course similar to that which they are on for the rest of their life.

On "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen (9113 words) ****

Not quite the Disney cartoon--but would one have seriously expected that--this is no happy tale, except maybe in some kind of heavenly salvation sort of way. The youngest mermaid in the family awaits the day she can go to the surface, and the day that she does, she witnesses a shipwreck and saves a prince, with whom she falls in love (and unbeknownst to her, so too does the prince). To become human and seduce the prince, she has to sell her voice to the merwitch (a voice she can reclaim, along with a soul, if the prince falls in love with her; if he takes another woman, however, she will die on the spot). Without a voice, she's incapable of expressing her love or her identity to the prince, who finds her beautiful but, who in a case of mistaken identity, settles on another woman. Oh, there's a bit more, and of course there's Andersen's brilliant set of descriptions as well, which you can read here.

On "Wutown" by Alia Volz (2091 words) ****

This story reminds me a bit of the work of Daniel Orozco. Like Orozco's often absurdist fiction, Volz sculpts a tale from a seeming log. Unlike Orozco's story "Officers Weep," which places love in the context of a police report, Volz's story focuses on the work itself--only, it's not police work. It's meter man work. Officer Wu is on a mission. He's the old stalwart, motivating the young meter people to do their best, to write out as many citations as possible--and he's also, unfortunately, on his way out. Retirement won't come easily for Wu. He's going to keep writing tickets until someone chains him up and locks him away. The mix of serious tone with seemingly trivial work makes this piece shine. Read the story here at Defenestration.

On "Keys to Successful Step-Fathering" by Carl E. Pickhardt ***

This is a basic primer on stepfathering, denoting a number of issues that stepfathers are likely to encounter. Its very simplicity made it a bit less than surprising. I can't say that I learned much from it. However, it is a good basic reminder of the issues and feelings that stepfathers face.

For example, the author begins by focusing on how such fathers necessarily feel about entering a marriage that involves this responsibility. It's perfectly normal, Pickhardt assures such men, to feel ambivalent. On one hand, stepparenting is a great opportunity that can bring much joy to all parties involved, but on another, the children are a constant distraction from the relationship one is trying to forge with one's spouse. There are ambivalencies on the part of the children as well, who might compare the new dad to the old or view the new one as an invader of sorts. Pickhardt says that feeling out the new roles in a family take time, and that as long as everyone is "just getting along" then that's good enough.

He denotes advantages of being a stepfather to a son and to a daughter, as well as the disadvantages to each, provides various strategies for dealing with conflict, establishing authority, dealing with discipline, and so on.

As a straight read, most of the book came off as common-sense information. However, I could see its use as something to dip in and out of when situations present themselves. Sometimes, we need refreshers, even with common sense.

On "The Tavern Wench of Venice" by Molly N. Moss (2713 words) ***

Leona is in search for a recipe and knowledge. What exactly makes the ravioli at the Flaming Chalice so good? The answer proves to be more than she would have ever planned on, more in the sense of being death-threateningly dangerous. I'm not a huge fan of fantasy fiction, but this one manages to break the mold in a way I'd not seen before. Read the story here at Silver Blade.

On "How to Spend a Cul-de-sac Summer" by Jaime Netzer (822 words) ***

I've been seeing more and more often stories as sets of instructions. Here's one that combines the instructions with a tale of innocence lost. What I like about this piece is how subtly that innocence is lost. There's this craving to do wrong but also a craving to do right by mom's commands. Slowly, the main character moves further and further from mom toward the inevitable. Read the story here at Twelve Stories.

On "Blowout in the Gulf" by William R. Freudenburg and Robert Gramling *****

Ostensibly about the Deepwater Horizon disaster, this book proved to be much more. Sure, the first two chapters discuss the goings-on during the blowout and its immediate aftermath, and the last chapter discusses steps that can be taken to minimize the chances that such disasters happen again in the future, but in between are more than one hundred pages about the history of the oil industry. Having read Stephen Coll's book about Exxon just a short while ago, that one focusing mostly on Exxon from 1989 to 2010, I found this text much more reader friendly to a person less informed about the industry.

I found particularly interesting the discussion of how the petroleum industry came to be. Oil, which occasionally seeped up from various spots on the globe, was typically used for things like pitch, but it wasn't really used for energy consumption until the whale industry began to have problems providing enough in terms of supply for the world market. Looking for a means to find oil without killing ever-decreasing numbers of whales, one man hit upon the idea of using petroleum. Then, someone else, thought about the idea of drilling for oil, once oil seeps seemed to be exhausted.

There is also, in the book, an extensive discussion of oil technology--just how drilling works and what a blowout preventer is. That part was in some ways rather dull, and while written for a lay reader, still a bit technical for my tastes. Still, knowing just how that process works was useful to know.

Much of the text is given over to the idea of energy independence, which the authors think is a political promise without any substance. The United States began exporting more oil than it imports in 1971, and we are not going back (although there is no discussion of fracking, which offers, I suppose, possibilities for energy independence that we didn't have even a few years ago). What the authors are clear about is that oil is a finite resource and eventually, whether thirty years from now or one hundred (depending on what new technologies and discoveries might arise), we're going to have to deal with it. More drilling is not the solution; that simply leads to faster depletion. Rather, we need to find ways to conserve, and by doing that, we can avert an eventual disaster that we have control over.

On "Eyes" by Vito Racanelli (1819 words) ****

"Eyes" is the nickname of the main character, a somewhat dimwitted older man who is hired by drug dealers to look out for the cops and to occasionally beat up or intimidate people who need that sort of treatment. But despite that criminal background, "Eyes" is someone fully sympathetic in Racanelli's treatment of him, a man without a lot of other choices. I'm reminded of a few homeless people I've known who preferred the street to a shelter. Read the story here at the Center for Fiction.

On "That Whooshing Noise before the End" by Bob Thurber (1367 words) ****

So this tale transplants a French film about divorce and a couple on the verge of their own. Okay, perhaps not the most interesting premise. But now try this: the couple is already separated, as of eight hours ago. And yet, here they are at the movies together. Sounds ridiculous, but that's what makes it incredibly interesting. (I'm reminded a bit of the tales, in the recent economic crisis, of couples forced to continue living together beyond their divorce. Why bother divorcing?) Read the story here at the Center for Fiction.

On "Snowed In" by Gary Percesepe (515 words) ***

This short tale works in metaphor and language. It's a familiar metaphor, but Percesepe adapts it well. The weather outside--it's winter and stormy. Inside, there's a fight going on, or the tail end of one, and yet also there's passion. In a sense, that's what this story is all about: turmoil--emotional and physical. Read it here at Twelve Stories.

On "Amazing Dogs" by Jan Bondeson ***

This was not quite the book I was expecting. I'd read about when it first came out, but for whatever reason, the thing that stuck in my head was Nazi dogs: the relationship between the Nazis and dogs and how the Nazis used dogs for particular ends. Very little of that is in the book. The book is more about famous dogs in general. As such, it has some interesting tidbits that would likely interest a canine lover. Not a dog person myself, I found myself shrugging my shoulders at much of the material, other than when I learned something historical I hadn't known about. In that sense, studying something like the dog in history can be fascinating, as it enlightens one to various aspects of our culture that existed just a century or two ago. Also selling this book: the magnificent illustration program. The book is, in itself, gorgeous.

Bondeson splits her material up by topic, as one might expect. There were several chapters on dog intelligence and communication. Much of this I was familiar with from the psycholinguists reading list I'd plowed through a few years ago. There were tales of dogs who could count (or not--as the Clever Hans effect is often at play) and of dogs who could supposedly communicate in various ways. Most interesting were those that managed, somehow, to say a few words of human vocabulary. This would be very unusual and difficult, as dogs vocal cords don't really allow for such.

Another chapter discussed dog actors. Apparently, in Victorian times, there was a liking for dog plays for a short while. Many times, the real fun of the play, however, was seeing how the dog would mess the play up, as dogs do tend to do as they want at times.

Another chapter focused on dogs that traveled by themselves. This is not something we see much of today: dogs on public transport just because they want to be. While reading this chapter, I was reminded of my friend Al's dog Max and how that dog sometimes would manage to get out and wander around the neighborhood for an afternoon. Al denoted how interesting it could be when Max got back, as sometimes Max would have ornaments from his travels, be it pizza crust or whatever.

Dogs have had various uses in days gone by that we don't see much of anymore. They've been used, for example, to collect money for the poor. (People were more inclined to give money to a collecting dog than a human. But not unlike some less-than-trustful humans, some dogs had a way of spending their earnings rather than bringing them back to the charity where they belonged.) Other dogs were used to turn roasts on a fire (turnspit dogs, they were called, a breed all but gone now). This job sounded incredibly horrid and the dogs terribly maltreated. Still other dogs were used to churn butter.

Bondeson then turned her attention to a few specific breeds, one bred to swim well and the other to rescue folks. This latter we know as the Saint Bernard, but the famed cask around its neck is mostly legend.

Of particular interest was a chapter on rat pits. A great sport was made for a while in the 1800s of dogs killing rats. Competitions in which a trained dog was put into a pit to attempt to kill one hundred rats faster than its counterpart dog became popular. Quite a gruesome spectacle--and one that fell out of vogue as people's sympathy with animals has grown.

And that in turn leads to Bondeson's account of a riot caused over a statue in a park dedicated to a dog who was killed in medical research. Medical students, incensed by this statue, rioted to pull this statue down. Defenders of experiments on dogs faced off against animal rights activists. This kind of love for the creatures we keep as pets, in turn, has led to a few pet cemeteries over the years, which is where Bondeson brings her book to a fitting end.

On "Why No One Writes Lyric Realism Anymore" by Kate Petersen (2827 words) ****

Not so much a story as a collection of vignettes about a hypothetical family, Petersen's short essay on the nature of our current literature is perhaps a bit tongue in cheek. Of course, nearly every literary writers writes some form of the lyric realism of her description: a family of four, dogs, cats, love stories, eating out, all the mundanities of life done up in fancy lingo. And yet, we remain fascinated. Or not. Read the story here at Necessary Fiction.

On "South of Hartford" by Frank Haberle (1358 words) ***

Haberle does what he does here by keeping things clean. The story starts in tragedy--or what could be tragedy--a very bad auto accident. By keeping to the details, Haberle avoids melodrama. As for lyricism, that's the stuff of dreams, and Haberle gives us a bit of that too, in its right place. Read the story here at Necessary Fiction.

On "The Mother Thief" by Leah Erickson (4981 words) ****

I've long been a fan of stories about werewolves and vampires in theory; however, in execution, such stories don't tend to interest me much. It's more the tradition and oddity of such ideas that intrigues me, I realize, then the actual stories that come from such traditions. Erickson's "Mother Thief," however, managed to keep me focused--well into the part where we learn that Grace is mother to a werewolf. Part of what is intriguing is the realism the Erickson brings to the subject matter, and another part, I think, is that the wolf theme becomes emblematic of another part of Grace's life. Eric, her former husband, was her best friend until marriage--until she brought him into her home. And in the same way, the transformation of this child from near-human to near-wolf leaves Grace's home battered. Nature--and marriage--are glorified, but really, in the end, both are indifferent, subject merely to what we make of them. And yet, within all of this there is passion, the passion of the wolf. You can read it here at the Coachella Review or here at Jenny Mag.

On "Killing: A Primer" by Matt Tanner (588 words) ***

This one took a couple of read. Tanner does the unspeakable here, killing off cute things. At first, I wonder, Why? I mean, it's disturbing, sure. But why focus on this moment? What exactly changes in the main character's life. And then, you realize that there's a back story here, that this event isn't something the character went looking for, and that this event is something that haunts the character. Read the piece here at Saltimbanque Review.

On "Riding with Strangers" by Elijah Wald ***

A big fan of Kerouac, especially when I was younger, I often had romantic notions of taking off on a hitchhiking tour of the country. But I knew that I would never dare such a thing. In reality, I suppose, I'd rather drive across the country--and would have preferred that even then. There is something that scares me a bit about getting into cars with strangers and also makes me feel a bit of an imposition. I'd have been more likely to hop a freight, had it been legal and halfway safe.

Nevertheless, I think I had higher hopes for this book than it could manage to deliver. It reminded me a bit of a book I own called Zen Driving. It's slick, written very clearly for a trade audience, and it delivers on that count. But I think sometimes trade books can be a bit too slick, such that they seem almost formulaic and glib, as if some editor went through and removed from it the interesting points of personality and made everything safe.

Which is not to say that Riding with Strangers is a bad book. I enjoyed it. It was a quick read. But I didn't find it very inspiring, and it's best sections--about the history and culture of hitching--were short and gathered in the middle of the narrative.

The book runs like this. Wald decides to hitchhike across the country, from his home in Boston to friends in Seattle. Over forty, he's done such trips many times. We get to go along for the ride, meeting his various compatriots, people who give him rides. We find out that hitching is much quicker than we might expect; he's rarely stuck anywhere for more than a couple of hours, and as he puts it, he gets across the country faster and more comfortably than he would on a bus.

In one of the more interesting asides, he discusses the ethnicity of those who give him rides. He notes that the ethnicities have become more varied in the past decade, that one can see the changing nature of the country just in who proffers rides. If he's on the Interstate, it's more than likely going to be someone who is not a white native-born American (at least, it proves so on this trip, picked up as he is by a Mexican and numerous recent immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia). If it's a country road, it's more than likely going to be a WASP. He almost never is picked up by African Americans (and never by Africans). He muses that this goes back to the long history of racism in the country, as well as the nature of where African Americans live (big cities). There's a notable difference when he goes South and finds that shared rides are actually more common. As he notes, as far as race goes, in the North, white people don't care if a black people get big as long as they don't get too close, but in the South it's just the opposite: white people don't mind how close they get as long as black people don't get too big. I thought it actually a very interesting observation, having grown up out West and moved to the South; I'd always felt the West more tense and racist--but less open about racism as well. This may be why

Interior chapters focus on the origin of the word "hitchhike," hitchhiking techniques, hitchhiking manners, and which types of vehicles make for the best or the most likely drives. Turns out hitching out of a large city is difficult, because most drivers are in a rush and aren't going far and don't want to stop. It's easier to hitch on a smaller highway. Truck and rest stops make good places to scare up a ride, which often consists of just asking around. One can also position one's self at an on-ramp. Signs are dubious but sometimes helpful. Women generally have an easier time getting rides than men (no surprise there), and more than two is a crowd. Big trucks are good for rides; SUVs, however, seldom offer a lift.

Also: it's illegal to hitchhike in many states. That was perhaps the most interesting thing to me, how the writer had to dodge cops or be careful with where he tried to get a ride, and it sort of makes the prospect of hitchhiking to me even less appealing. I might well be fine asking for a ride, but if I might get harassed by a cop for doing so, such isn't going to be to my liking.