FLORIDA STORIES: Tales From the Tropics ...

FLORIDA STORIES: Tales From the Tropics edited John & Kirsten Miller (Chronicle: $10.95; 176 pp., paperback original). This erratic collection includes excerpts from factual and fictional works set in the Sunshine State. Joan Didion finds Miami as bleakly depressing as Los Angeles, while Isaac Bashevis Singer focuses on the city’s superficiality: “A planned hedonism. But the boredom of the desert remained. No loud music could dispel it, no garishness wipe it out . . . the swampland refused to give way.” Zora Neale Hurston recalls turn-of-the-century life in America’s first incorporated black town; Dave Barry laboriously attempts to find humor in a visit to Disney World. Many of these selections will make Angelenos a little more appreciative of Southern California’s mixed charms.