While I'm not sure "astonishing" is the word I'd use to describe these stories (I'm reminded of Louis C.K.'s excellent bit about how hyperbole has become regular speech), I'd definitely say they are excellent. Each story is good, and I'm happy to say that the established writers deliver while the un...
I generally love McSweeney's (even if I tend to have the baseless notion that Dave Eggers is slightly pretentious), and this collection of humor from McSweney's Internet Tendency is no exception. It has one of my all-time favorite McSweeney pieces: an unused audio commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam ...
For almost a decade I was looking forward to reading this -- honestly, I'm glad I didn't until recently, because 2003 Elijah would've been more disappointed than 2011 Elijah was. Getting authors to write outside of their comfort zone can be great: it can also be an interesting exercise with middling...
Fuuuuuuck, I've been almost buying this damn book for about seven years. Found for cheap at a little bookstore I wanted to support, so finally got it, and its sort-of-companion.
A rather odd - but not bad - illustrated collection of short stories. The emphasis is on rather twisted tall-tale/fairytale type pieces. According to the publisher, the intended audience is "young adults first, all other adults second," - they're not children's stories, but they're mostly stories ab...
I hate rating short story collections since there are usually a couple of stories I love, a couple I hated, and the rest somewhere in the middle, so in this case here is my typical 3 star rating for an anthology.
not my cup of tea. i like absurd humour, not what purports to be clever humour. the only thing in it that really made me laugh very hard was the Journal of a new COBRA recruit because it pointed out the absurdities in the cartoon: why stand quietly and aim when you can just keep running at the targe...
I liked the intro and that was it. One of the most uninspired short story collections that I have ever read. The title is better than the book itself.
A great collection, chock full of some of my favorite writers.
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