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_Futures from Nature_, Henry Gee (editor)
_Get Real_, _The Hot Rock_, _Bank Shot_, Donald Westlake
_Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess_, Gael Greene
The problem with a 250 page anthology of 2 page SF stories is that there's always time for another one, even if there isn't. Most of these are pretty good to very good, considering the length limitation; only three or four not to my taste.
I am slowly working my way through all of Westlake's fiction; I had already made significant progress on the Parker stories, and a recent review of his last book, _Get Real_, made me pick that up. It stars Westlake's other long-lived criminal, John Dortmunder. These are comedic crime fiction, in that plans go awfully awry through more-or-less reasonable mistakes. I liked _Get Real_ enough to immediately pick up the first two Dortmunder books -- the story of an African emerald that needs to be stolen five times, and the story of a bank robbery in which the crew takes the whole bank. Fun.
I dropped Gael Greene's book about halfway through and have no intention of returning to it. There's not a lot of good food writing in there, and the autobiographical details go "I had sex with Elvis, and with Clint Eastwood, and with..." and follow up with "and it came as a complete surprise to me that my husband had an affair and wanted a divorce." Bleh.
_Get Real_, _The Hot Rock_, _Bank Shot_, Donald Westlake
_Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess_, Gael Greene
The problem with a 250 page anthology of 2 page SF stories is that there's always time for another one, even if there isn't. Most of these are pretty good to very good, considering the length limitation; only three or four not to my taste.
I am slowly working my way through all of Westlake's fiction; I had already made significant progress on the Parker stories, and a recent review of his last book, _Get Real_, made me pick that up. It stars Westlake's other long-lived criminal, John Dortmunder. These are comedic crime fiction, in that plans go awfully awry through more-or-less reasonable mistakes. I liked _Get Real_ enough to immediately pick up the first two Dortmunder books -- the story of an African emerald that needs to be stolen five times, and the story of a bank robbery in which the crew takes the whole bank. Fun.
I dropped Gael Greene's book about halfway through and have no intention of returning to it. There's not a lot of good food writing in there, and the autobiographical details go "I had sex with Elvis, and with Clint Eastwood, and with..." and follow up with "and it came as a complete surprise to me that my husband had an affair and wanted a divorce." Bleh.
