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
WRITTEN WAY BACK: I'm 3 stories in. (I let these collections sit by the bed, and pick up and dabble, like cleansers between other courses.) Smith has a remarkable confidence, backed up by a precision in prose. The stories are high-concept whimsy (the bang) shackled to an almost-emo sincerity, often despairing (the crunch). I like 'em well enough, but I keep seeing Lorrie Moore and Judy Budnitz staring over his shoulder... so I can't recommend him as the best bright new thing. But there's talent and ambition, so he may be another comer, finding the right pitch....ON CONCLUDING, JULY '08:
Finally closed the door on the last story. I enjoyed each one, as they came along, but what I say above kind of stands--nothing threw me over, made me rethink my sense of story, made me double over (in pain, empathy, astonishment, laughter). But that's a pretty damn unfair standard to bring to bear, and they were pretty consistently good, these stories, and very worth parsing out.