Some items worth reading, some not so much

 kw: book reviews, story reviews, anthologies, literature, fiction, poetry

Since the prior post I've had time to read seven more pieces from 2024 Pushcart Prize XLVIII: Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson and others.

Some of them had me wondering, as this fellow is, "What could possibly have led the author to write this?" I'll comment on the others, though there was only one that I actually liked. It comes first, then the others.

• "Dreamers Awaken" by Scott Spencer – A memory of someone about my age of Jim Crow America in the 1950's. The real core of the story is his longing for acceptance, which transcends culture, race, and time.
• "Two People" by James Langenbach – Free verse vignettes of a couple's lives. Saved from total obscurity by sort of going somewhere.
• "What if Putin Laughed" by Steve Stern – A long discursion on the meaning of "schlemiel" (a Yiddish term for a semi-lovable loser), which is found to be a long lead-up to a two-line joke about V. Zelenskyy confronting V. Putin. A clever joke, really.

Just as a side note: I used Dall-E3 to produce the image above. It took a few tries. I was tempted to use this image instead, but none of the pieces really made my head explode.