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cheesygiraffe's review against another edition
4.0
Finished up last night. There were some great stories in here and some mediocre ones. My favorite 2 are Carlton Mellick's Baby Jesus Butt Plug and Gina Ranalli's Suicide Girls in the AfterLife.
dantastic's review against another edition
3.0
The Bizarro Starter Kits are designed to introduce people to the Bizarro genre. I, on the other hand, bought it so I could read The Baby Jesus Butt Plug in public without people harassing me. Here are some of the wonders contained within the Bizarro Starter Kit (Orange):
The collection starts with a collection of D. Harlan Wilson short stories. Cops & Bodybuilders was my favorite. What would you do if a bodybuilder showed up in your living room and started posing and wouldn't leave?
The Baby Jesus Butt Plug by Carlton Mellick III In a bizarre future, babies are kept as pets and baby jesuses are the most popular, though some people use them for nefarious sexual purposes. Mary and her husband are such a couple until their baby jesus has ideas of its own...
Yeah, this was pretty damn bizarre. Ever have your significant other ask you what you're laughing about and not daring to tell him or her? There's a lot of that in this one.
Extinction Journals by Jeremy Robert Johnson After a nuclear exchange, Dean wanders the ruins of the US in his suit made of cockroaches. Will he find any other survivors?
Aside from mentioning how disgusting/awesome the suit made out of cockroaches was, I can't say much else about this one without spoiling the plot. "Great post apocalypic tale with the added bonus of prominently featuring suit-forming symbiotic insects" is about the only thing I have to add.
The Greatest Fucking Moment in Sports by Kevin Donihe: Oscar Legba, insect enthusiast and America's big hope in the Tour de Saucisse-Dommages bicycle race, suffers the death of his coach the night before the big day. Can Legba prevail?
The Greatest Fucking Moment in Sports nicely illustrates the exaggerated importance America puts on sports and is hilarious.
The collection also includes several other novellas and short stories. All things considered, it's a good Bizarro collection but I preferred Bizarro Starter Kit (Purple).
The collection starts with a collection of D. Harlan Wilson short stories. Cops & Bodybuilders was my favorite. What would you do if a bodybuilder showed up in your living room and started posing and wouldn't leave?
The Baby Jesus Butt Plug by Carlton Mellick III In a bizarre future, babies are kept as pets and baby jesuses are the most popular, though some people use them for nefarious sexual purposes. Mary and her husband are such a couple until their baby jesus has ideas of its own...
Yeah, this was pretty damn bizarre. Ever have your significant other ask you what you're laughing about and not daring to tell him or her? There's a lot of that in this one.
Extinction Journals by Jeremy Robert Johnson After a nuclear exchange, Dean wanders the ruins of the US in his suit made of cockroaches. Will he find any other survivors?
Aside from mentioning how disgusting/awesome the suit made out of cockroaches was, I can't say much else about this one without spoiling the plot. "Great post apocalypic tale with the added bonus of prominently featuring suit-forming symbiotic insects" is about the only thing I have to add.
The Greatest Fucking Moment in Sports by Kevin Donihe: Oscar Legba, insect enthusiast and America's big hope in the Tour de Saucisse-Dommages bicycle race, suffers the death of his coach the night before the big day. Can Legba prevail?
The Greatest Fucking Moment in Sports nicely illustrates the exaggerated importance America puts on sports and is hilarious.
Spoiler
I almost died laughing when Legba was decapitated but his corpse continued with the race!The collection also includes several other novellas and short stories. All things considered, it's a good Bizarro collection but I preferred Bizarro Starter Kit (Purple).
antimagiczone's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
neko_cam's review against another edition
2.0
I expected to like this collection more than I did, because I really enjoyed the first Bizarro novel I read some time ago and have since come to understand that several other short stories that I've enjoyed were, upon reflection, also somewhat Bizarro. Still, it seems that while I dig some styles of Bizarro others just don't do it for me at all. For instance, I greatly enjoyed Bruce Taylor's stories of magical realism.
Other stories that I'd rate highly include:
The Man in the Thick Black Spectacles (a strange story in a strange office)
Classroom Dynamics (with a university professor feeling too much for his students)
The Baby Jesus Butt Plug (creepy with some really unsettling moments reminiscent of 'Eraserhead')
Extinction Journals (post-apoc story of a man in a cockroach suit trying to survive)
Other stories that I'd rate highly include:
The Man in the Thick Black Spectacles (a strange story in a strange office)
Classroom Dynamics (with a university professor feeling too much for his students)
The Baby Jesus Butt Plug (creepy with some really unsettling moments reminiscent of 'Eraserhead')
Extinction Journals (post-apoc story of a man in a cockroach suit trying to survive)
sarahconnor89757's review against another edition
5.0
This is a great collection and I was delighted with the pieces I was familiar with just as much as the ones I wasn't.
the_graylien's review against another edition
4.0
Finally... My introduction to Bizarro Fiction.
If you love weird, non-linear, unconventional fiction, if you like to really dig around in the world of literature and find the things that are really just intelligent and "out there", then this is probably a part of what should be your introduction to BIZARRO: A genre that showcases all of these things.
I'd say that most of the works contained in these pages were smart and very enjoyable, but my stand-out favorites were the story "Classroom Dynamics" by D. Harlan Wilson, "The Baby Jesus Butt Plug" by Carlton Mellick III (which reminded me very much of the films of David Lynch), "Extinction Journals" by Jeremy Robert Johnson, and "Suicide Girls in the Afterlife" by Gina Ranalli (which was probably my favorite in the volume and read like an abridged, Bizarro version of "The Divine Comedy").
This one is a must read for anyone interested in the Bizarro Movement or anyone who loves the weird, strange, and extraordinary.
If you love weird, non-linear, unconventional fiction, if you like to really dig around in the world of literature and find the things that are really just intelligent and "out there", then this is probably a part of what should be your introduction to BIZARRO: A genre that showcases all of these things.
I'd say that most of the works contained in these pages were smart and very enjoyable, but my stand-out favorites were the story "Classroom Dynamics" by D. Harlan Wilson, "The Baby Jesus Butt Plug" by Carlton Mellick III (which reminded me very much of the films of David Lynch), "Extinction Journals" by Jeremy Robert Johnson, and "Suicide Girls in the Afterlife" by Gina Ranalli (which was probably my favorite in the volume and read like an abridged, Bizarro version of "The Divine Comedy").
This one is a must read for anyone interested in the Bizarro Movement or anyone who loves the weird, strange, and extraordinary.
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