Currently reading
McGlue
Knife Fight and Other Struggles
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
The Good Lord Bird
Ancillary Justice
Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (New Edition)
Dissident Gardens
Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
Complete Novels
There's something about a three-page story, like a 45-second pop song, that usually leaves me wanting. All conceptual riff, no cattle. Or something like that.But there were a few stories here that turned on a dime from absurdist punk to pathos, took some smirky wise-ass jape (a pet named Rabin) and wrung something funny and political then sad in four pages flat. At its best, and this collection is pretty uniformly at its best, the stories made me immediately turn to read them again, and I imagine this coming off the shelf every few years. One story, about a boy being taught a "responsibility" with a piggy bank, is a new favorite...