The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011

by Dave Eggers, Guillermo del Toro (Introduction)

The Best American Series®
First, Best, and Best-Selling

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, the very best pieces are selected by a leading writer in the field, making the Best American series the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011 includes

Daniel Alarcón, Clare Beams, Sloane Crosley, Anthony Doerr, Neil Gaiman, Mohammed Hanif, Mac McClelland, Michael Paterniti, Olivier Schrauwen,
Gary Shteyngart, and others

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Essays, Anthologies, Collections, Contemporary, Literature

498 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is best known for his 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Eggers is also the founder of several notable literary and philanthropic ventures, including the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness. Additionally, he founded ScholarMatch, a program that connects donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in numerous prestigious publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine.

Reviews

[Radwa]

* giving up on this book, because most of the choices really were duds.

- I didn't know that the Best American series was a response to the Best British series.
- I like the humor of Dave Eggers, so that's my first indicator that I should read something by him
- loved the intro by Guillermo del toro

*Best American Fax from Don Delillo: I haven't read anything by him, but I liked some of his answers in these faxes he sent as answers to interview questions instead of emails. his self awareness was just on point
* Best American Wikileaks Revelations: I never was interested in reading the available pages of wikileaks, because I never want to confirm the level of corruption i just feel is going on. but it was interesting to see some topics here i know somethings about, like: bush and saddam's interactions, qadhafi's family scandals, north and south korea families reunions, and mubarak's succession.
* Best American New Band Names: Fungi Girls is a mood. Marina & the Diamonds ftw!
* Best American very short story: didn't really enjoy tis story that much.
* Best American Even Shorter Story: this one made me shudder
* Best American Lawsuits: american really sue anyone over anything.
* Best American Adjectives, Nouns and verbs used in reporting on the gulf oil spill of 2010: all I'll say on this one is that these categories are very very specific in a very odd way. but i'd never expect them to use: humpty dumpty.
* Best American new entries to the oxford english dictionary beginning wuth the letter H: hot dogger, is a stall that sells hot dogs. oh wow.
* Best American Profile of an International Pop Star: who are these people? but gotta admit the engaging writing style made me finish reading an article about a pop star i never heard about. which isn't surprising. hip-hop isn't really my thing, but that's truly a hell of a profile
* Best American Commune Names: starseed seems like my kind of place, also Dragon Belly Farm and Pod of Dolphins
* Best American Ominous Place Names: Hell, Michigan sounds like a pleasent place.
* Best American Call of Duty handles: I don't even play call of duty!
* Best American Wifi netweork names: i like it when people are petty with their wifi netweork names
* Best American Categories that got cut: I would've loved it if they added the pet obituaries instead of some of the categories here.
* Best American Mark Twain Quotes: I have never read Mark Twain, but some of these quotes got me actually interested more than the synopses of his books.
* Best American Powems written in response to Arizona Senate Bill 1070: a controversial bill anti-illegal immigration in the US, and once again it's very epsecific but the powems were raw and honest
* Second Lives - Daniel Alarcon: a story of immigration, family, and the elusive american dream.
* An Oral History of Adama Bah: The story of one of the Muslims living in the US being forced to realize the face that their country never has and never will see them as one of its citizens. it's a harrowing tale in all of its truthfulness. god, I'm glad that I have never ever wanted to live in the US.
* The Women - Tom Barbash: a young man deals with his mother's death and his father's many hookups following her deat. felt nothing for him and the story
* We Show what We Have Learned - Clare Beams: I loved this story! it started as an example of children cruelty, then a perfect example of the innocence they try so hard to hide, with an excellent fantastical twist of a disintegrating teacher.
* Art of the Steal - Joshuah Bearman: huh, so i thought this was a story, but it seems like it's actually a profile on a real life thief? the antics and details remind me of the film "catch me if you can".
* Le Paris! - Sloane Crosley: well, this illustrates how some of those obnoxious tourists act when they travel abroad. honestly, paris isn't on my bucket list to visit, but this woman's experience with it is so bad it's hilarious, and i think it's a mixture of her fault and the place's fault. I can see the appeal in ths article for high schoolers who see themselves packing through europe and cming back with snarky comments, but it didn't do anything for me.
* Game of Her life - Tim Crothers: Normally, I'm not interested in profiles about players, but a female chess player from uganda who stod up and faced her harsh circumstances? way to go, girl! I want to read a biography about her, but the author did good job illustrating her life and success.
* Solitude and Leadership - William Deresiewicz: a speech to new military cadets isn't something I'd really like reading.
* The Deep - Anthony Doerr: such a tragic story of a sick boy and the girl he's risking his health for. love the writing. it tore at my heart. also does it give some forrest gump vibes?
* Orange - Neil Gaiman: this story is all answers to questions we don't get to read, so you're guessing what exactly happened through the answers of a teen to police questioning about something weird that happened to her family, and since it's neil gaiman, it's fantastical of course.
* Butt and Bhatti - Mohammed Hanif: a police officer tries to woe a dcotr with his ailments, but he really is both pitiable and unlikable at the same time, but it takes a scary turn of events.
* Roger Ebert: The Essential Man - Chris Jones: I have never read anything by Roger Ebert, as for some reason I'm not into movie reviews as I am with book reviews, but this looks at the tragic time of his life after a long career.
* What Killed Aiyana Stanley Jones? - Charlie Leduff: the madness of gun violence in the US and the police brutality that never ends and the crime that doesn't really have a solution in sight. a tragedy.
* Weber's Head - J Robert Lennon: fnally an interesting story. this is about a rommate who forces himself on the narrator and the creepiness that ensues.
* For Us Surrender is out of the Question - Mac McClelland: a short version of the author's account of time spent in thailand among "terrorists", who are actually burmese refugees in thailand and their precarious situation. the writing is horrifying in its details

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea what shelf to file this in. Dave Eggers edited it, Neil Gaiman contributed one small piece (clever, but not stellar), and there's just a little too much of the self-absorbed modern writer in it for me to be entirely happy. I skipped a lot, but did find a few fiction pieces I liked. The best work in the book, though, by a country mile, is the stellar non-fiction essay "Solitude and Leadership" by William Deresiewicz. It's an address to a West Point (military officer school) class, with deep reference to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the difference between bureaucracy and autonomy, the need to have your own thoughts, the dangers of distraction, the need for time to find your own views, and so much more. I can't quote bits of this, because it's all so bloody good. It's online and worth reading. More, alas, than I found true of some of the other material here.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

these are getting a bit predictable, with some bleeding heart magazine articles, some quirky "edgy" short stories, some more staid and mature essays, and new band names (but really..? they could get better american band names by listening to london's 6music grumble grumble grumble). some highlights of good editing are a short section of mark twain autobio part 1, some wikileaks that make the us govt seem not only like cynical evil empire dangerous, but also complete twits and morons, and a LIST called "best american adjectives, nouns, and verbs used in reporting on the gulf oil spill of 2010 (note the date, these kids expect more and bigger to come in their bright bright future:)).
tar balls
flat footed
kidney-like
subsea
blind shear ram
dale earnhardt jr. jr.
gayngs
junk shot
billions of fish eggs
blew
pumped
choke
smearing
oozing
burned
k-holes
DOM
dominant legs
foxes in fiction
inserted
skimmed
long reddish-orange ribbons of oil

[Dorothea · Rating 5 out of 5]

The bulk of this anthology is superb. Some of the short stories that really stand out are:

- Neil Gaiman's "Orange" --- a police interview with a teenaged girl whose sister uses an experimental dye as a self-tanning cream

- Anthony Doerr's "The Deep" is the BEST piece in the collection and likely the best short story I've ever read. The story is about a boy with a heart condition growing up in Detroit in the decade before the Great Depression. Each sentence is practically a work of art in this piece. This story can also be found in the paperback version of Doerr's book Memory Wall - a recent collection of his short stories. I ordered both of his short story collections after reading "The Deep."

- Sloane Crosly has a humorous story about visiting a friend in Paris.

- Joyce Carol Oates has a story about a cosmetic surgeon's harrowing encounter with female patients who are swept up in a cultish desire for trepanation as a spiritual procedure.

I wrongly assumed this anthology consists solely of short stories, as there are several essays also included. My favorite essay is Mac McClelland's, "For Us Surrender is Out of the Question." McClelland, a human rights reporter for Mother Jones magazine, traveled to Mae Sot, Thailand to volunteer to teach English to a group of Karen (pronounced "kuh-REN") activists in Thailand who risk their lives bringing to light the atrocities committed in the military dictatorship of Burma.

Adama Bah has an essay originally published in Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice documenting her arrest and detention by the FBI in 2005 when was 16 years old. She had been attending an Islamic boarding school in Buffalo, New York and was back in Manhattan with her family for Ramadan break when a dozen armed FBI agents came to their East Harlem apartment and arrested her and her father. She spent six weeks in detention and then lived under partial house arrest for three years with an ankle bracelet and a court-issued gag order that prohibited her from speaking about her case. She was suspected of "signing up to be a suicide bomber" simply because she had joined a women's study group for converts and people new to Islam at a mosque in Buffalo.

William Deresiewicz has a piece that was actually a speech he delivered to a plebe class at the US Military Academy at West Point. I almost skipped this piece entirely because I'm not really into military things, but I decided to read it due to an interview I read about a year ago with anti-war activist and West Point graduate Paul Chappell, in which Chappell revealed that he was exposed to Noam Chomsky's writings at West Point.

Deresiewicz, taught English at Yale for ten years and has written for The Nation and is a contributing editor at the New Republic. He speaks about the necessity for solitude in order to learn to think for and find yourself. He compares steady exposure to facebook, twitter and other forms of media as "continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people's thoughts" which prevent one from hearing their own thoughts. He draws from Joesph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness and encourages his listeners to read books as a form of solitude, adding that a book has two advantages over a tweet: the person who wrote the book thought about it more carefully than a tweet is thought about and the book is the result of the author's solitude -- the author's attempt to "think for himself."

James Spring's "Mid-Life Cowboy" originally aired on This American Life is his true story of his journey to Baja Mexico to work as an independent bounty hunter on a whim.


Also notable was a lovely comic/illustrated story about a Jewish rug-makers day at an old country market by James Strum.

There were a few stories that didn't grab me, but over all this anthology is solid.

[Kilean · Rating 5 out of 5]

These non-requireds have been requirements of mine for a few years now and this might be the greatest one yet. Roughly four hundred and twenty-six pages on printed paper with a gorgeous cover, it’s funny, sad, provocative, angry, and perhaps the best bunch of disparate writings to be had this year. Hard to dislike a book that lists, among many things, right there in the Front Section, “Best American Call of Duty Handles” and “Best American WiFi Network Names” along with some Twain quotes/passages from his autiboigraphy and a profile on M.I.A. The intro by Guillermo Del Toro was pretty sweet too.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

an enjoyable smorgasbord of mind-blowing variety.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011 is always a good way to find new authors to read. This edition has an introduction by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro most well-known for Pan's Labyrinth. This edition only has one story that I had previously come across, Chris Jones' excellent profile for Esquire: "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man." In fact most of my favorite pieces in this collection were nonfiction pieces: Gary Shteyngart's profile of M.I.A. for GQ, "An Oral History of Adama Bah" a disturbing story of American injustice following in the wake of post 9/11 excesses against Muslims, Tim Crother's "Game Of Her Life" for ESPN The Magazine-about a young, female African chess prodigy, William Deresiewicz's moving speech to a West Point graduating class from The Amateur Scholar-"Solitude and Leadership", Charlie LeDuff's analysis of what has gone wrong in Detroit-"What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?", Mac McClelleand's report on the struggles of the Karen people being chased out of Myanmar in "For Us Surrender Is Out Of The Question", Michale Paterniti's GQ profile of a man who tries to prevent suicides on a busy bridge in Nanjing "The Suicide Catcher", and James Spring's story of tracking down a fugitive family in Mexico, "Mid-Life Cowboy," for This American Life. My two favorite short stories were "Second Lives" by Daniel Alarcon and "Weber's Head" by J. Robert Lennon. All in all, it is a pretty solid collection.

[Alison · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this as much as I remember liking collections in past years. Things like this are always hit or miss, though. In any case it's always an interesting combination of things, this edition includes a couple of comics, short stories, nonfiction essays, random lists, and a few other things. I didn't read it cover to cover -- if something wasn't holding my interest I moved on. If you like these sorts of random compilations of things I would definitely check it out, but it's not for everyone.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best Best in a few years I think...

[Indira]

a fabulous gift from terry, who understands that the short story is all i can handle at the moment. :)

[DeadWeight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like all the collections from Best American Nonrequired it makes an inseparable bathroom companion. Could maybe have done without so many list entries, which tended to be pretty hit or miss - the list on Best Band Names had a couple decent entries, such as Personal & The Pizzas (which is a legitimately good band, turns out), but overall contained to much filler. To emphasize just how 2011 this edition truly is, Yuck makes an appearance on said list, a name which is, like... it's a good band name, sure, but I don't know that its such a name that really stops me in my tracks or makes me laugh.

That piece on M.I.A. was really fantastic, and I think I recall reading some of that one when it first appeared - it's nearly fucking novella length, ffs.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

High schoolers vote on their favorite readings to build a collection. The collection includes fiction and nonfiction, stories, essays, comics, etc. I had never heard of this "The Best American..." but noticed it on an airbnb bookshelf in Portland, OR. Because I believe anyone who lives in Portland is cool, I ordered a copy for myself. I've slowly gone through it and really enjoyed it. Dave Eggers edited this so that was extra incentive. The idea that high schoolers spent their time reading, discussing, and choosing each piece thrills me to no end. I'm probably not cooler now but that's ok. Time well spent. I'm ordering the latest version from 2019.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite pieces from this collection:

+Tom Barbash - The Women
+Joshuah Bearman - Art of the Steal
+Tim Crothers - Game of her Life
+William Deresiewicz - Solitude and Leadership
+Anthony Doerr - The Deep
+Neil Gaiman - Orange
+Charlie LeDuff - What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?
+J. Robert Lennon - Weber's Head
+Mac McClelland - For Us to Surrender is Out of the Question
+Anjali Sachdeva - Pleiades
+Olivier Schrauwen - The Imaginist
+Joan Wickersham - The Boys' School, or the News From Spain

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blah. One of my least favorite compilations. I only have four more to go until I've read them all. Part 1 wasn't that witty or engaging which it usually is. So on to 2012 - which Amazon mistakenly sent me two copies of and when I returned one they sent it back. So maybe that's a sign and it will be great and I'll gift the second copy. Actually, if anyone wants a free copy PM me and I'll send it to you. Hope someone enjoys this one.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best "Best American Nonrequired Reading" that they've aggregated, but an enjoyable diversion nonetheless. The 'best American...' lists left something to be desired, but the short stories had some gems. I enjoyed "An Oral History of Adama Bah," "Game of Her Life," "Orange" (Neil Gaiman's characteristic oddity), "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man," "Weber's Head," "The Suicide Catcher," and "Homing."

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not here for atrocities in Burma and suicides in China, but that's what I got. This isn't about being informed, it's scrabbling in the dirt for entertainment. Voyeurism. I used to love this series. Some of the fiction is excellent. The comics are good. The front matter is dull, mostly. But the non-fiction is just too much. Trying too hard, maybe? So disappointing.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good collection from this group. I have to say I lean towards preferring the humorous and odd that are included over longer, more serious, pieces. But these collections, IMO never disappoint.

[behsforensics]

Team owns Oral History of Adama Bah, An by Bah, Adama digitally.

[Ryan J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

For March, I read The Best American Non-Required Reading, edited by Dave Egger. It is a collection of excerpts from fiction and nonfiction articles, novels, letters, gaming websites, short stories, etc. The most obvious part of the book was the aspect and message that popped out at me last. As I was reading, I was wondering and asking myself why people did the things they did. The excerpts in this book were funny, confusing, saddening, inspiring, and hopeful. I was looking at the minor ideas and messages in the book like I do when analyzing all of my other books, but I wasn’t looking at the big picture. When I finished reading the last story that I was going to read, I thought about how the book as a whole was incredibly moving. Through thinking this, the overall message came out to me. I believe that most people think that only one person can write an amazing book, when the truth actually that one person or 500 people can write an amazing book. Through all the authors of the stories and letters and articles in this book, they were put together to create an amazing book with many different people all a part of the whole.
As I stated before, this book was incredibly moving. It was a collection of feelings like happiness, confusion, humor, sadness, inspiration, and hope. I want to point out a couple stories that really popped out to me. The first one is What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?, written by Charlie LeDuff. It is a story about a mistake made by the police that killed an innocent girl in Detroit. I then goes on to explain the founding of Detroit and how everything fell into chaos and the economic aspect of Detroit died. It also explains several other deaths of innocent people in Detroit. When Charlie LeDuff is asking questions to Dr. Carl Schmidt, Schmidt says that the area in which kids grow up and live kill them. Schmidt says, “‘The psychopathology of growing up on Detroit,’ he said. ‘Some people are doomed from birth because their environment is so

toxic’”(238). This illustrates how some people are doomed from the very beginning. After the Detroit economy crashed, it brought down life in the area with it. Growing up in Detroit for a kid is extremely dangerous and risky. On a literal level everybody knows what killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones. It was a bullet. But on a deeper level, the bullet was Detroit and at one point or another it was going to be thrown at her at astonishing force and Aiyana was going to be taken down like the Detroit economy. I also wanted to talk about a story called The Imaginist. It a cartoon that depicts the unreal hopes and dreams of a permanently hospitalized man. In the dream, the man says, “‘Do you feel my heart beating? Do you understand? Do you feel the same? Or am I only dreaming? Is this burning an eternal flame? I believe it’s meant to be I watch you when you’re sleeping. You belong to me. Say my name. Sun shines through the rain. A whole life so lonely and you come to ease the pain’”(396). The story is the dream of the man that is in the hospital. The man is in a wheelchair and he cannot walk and probably can’t talk. He is depressed and knows that he cannot do anything else with his life. He dreams that he owns a massive house where anything is possible. He dreams that he can fly up staircases and walk on his own. He shows his dream in happy, bright colors, and reality in dull red and gray colors. He also shows the bad things in his actual life and distorts them into ugly creatures in his dream. When he is sleeping in his dream, an ugly blob of something that vaguely resembles a human walks in to wake him up in the morning in his dream and in real life it is his nurse that comes to help him out. The dream to the man is the only thing that truly belongs to himself. Everything else belongs to heaven and the hospital nurse. His life belongs to no one. The dream is a place where he can escape to be his own person without somebody else always hanging over him.

This book is one of the greatest books I have ever read. It would recommend it a million times to anybody that can comprehend the messages and symbolism in the book. I would give it 10/10 stars.

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the first "Best American" book I have read and I wanted so badly to like the book. It took me over 4 months to finally finish this book. Overall I would give it 2 1/2 stars, but have to curve down. There were some interesting stories, but I couldn't bear to read some of the others.

My favorite stories were:
- Some of the beginning lists like the best Call of Duty gamer tag names, best new band names and best lawsuits

- Adama Bah. An Oral History Of Adama Bah from Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice (A really interesting story about how a Muslim student from New York was wrongly accused after 9/11).

- Tim Crothers. Game Of Her Life from ESPN The Magazine (really cool story about a girl from Uganda, I think, who goes to play in an international chess tournament).

- Neil Gaiman. orange from Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine (I actually LOVED this. It was a Q&A
piece, minus the questions. You only got to read the answers to the survey, but it was great.)

- Chris Jones. Roger Ebert: The Essential Man from Esquire (so sad)

- Charlie LeDuff. What killed aiyana stanley-jones? from Mother Jones (Horrifying story about crime and life in Detroit)

OKay, so based on that list maybe I liked it a little better than I thought. Still, it took forever to get through some of the other stories so I ended up skipping some of them. I'm changing it to three stars. :)

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a particularly tricky review to write because this is a collection of stories by multiple authors, not a single story by a single individual. But, that very reason may be why I give top honors to this book. It is such a diverse collection of stories - some fiction, some non-fiction - by such a diverse collection of authors that you never quite know what lies at the end of one story and the beginning of another.

The entire collection is compiled as part of an 826 National initiative. From what I gather, these groups of high school students scour the printed word - from big-name publications to in-flight magazines and radio show transcripts - to find the very best "Nonrequired Reading" in America. Then, they debate with each other over the merits of each story... ultimately choosing a select few to publish into this annual collection.

The mission of 826 National is worth supporting and giving 5 stars of its own... and the stories in this book certainly receive a 5-star rating. Sure, some are stronger than others, but they all make for some great reading.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some terrific non-fiction and fiction pieces in here..

the best fiction:
The Deep (Anthony Doerr) -- a terrific short story, the best in the collection
Pleiades (Anjai Sachdeva)
The Boy's School, or the News from Spain (Joan Wickersham) - written in the 2nd person, interesting

the best non-fiction:
An Oral History of Adama Bah - Terrifying story of a Guinean immigrant teenager detained after 9/11
Game of Her Life (Tim Crothers) - Fascinating story about a female Ugandan chess prodigy
Art of the Steal (Joshua Bearman) - Interesting story about a Canadian super thief
What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones (Charlie LeDuff) - A devastating account of Detroit's current state
For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question (Mac McClelland) - About Burmese refugees/rebels exiled in Thailand.

Most of the other fiction ranged from mediocre to bad, the other non-fiction didn't grab me in the same way. Decent collection overall, though.

[S King · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved it!
This was a Christmas present from . After exams I find that I need shorter pieces to read because to be frank my attention span has been shot and I cannot focus on a full novel.
I read this during my trip to Cambodia and Vietnam. I thought it would cut through the holiday fuzz that seems to seep in, and yeah it totally did! This collection of short stories allowed an escape (from the escapade that an overseas holiday is? okay...whatever steph) from the swarms of motorbike traffic in Hanoi and Saigon, the unexpected rain at a gorgeous Hoi An resort and the rushing roar of airplane propellers. The piece by Mac McClelleand ("For Us Surrender Is Out Of The Question") was a slap to the face that definitely changed my view on terrorism and unjust government systems.
I am not too sure what to make of the initial listings but enjoyed most of them. all in all a lovely collection worth the read.
okay gtg. will finish at a later date

[Garrett Zecker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all of the BANR books, this one is a stellar collection of engaging, rough, masterful, touching, and hilarious stories across all genres. The work that is contained within was edited by high school students who have read a tremendous amount of media and work, choosing the best and the brightest of last years pieces that should be contained in a volume meant for the masses. The board had unanimously chosen well, and the work itself is striking and beautiful, resilient and timely, and just a whole lot of fun to read. I really have enjoyed this collection from the beginning, and Dave Eggers work is inspiring to me. I look forward to reading more in the future. My favorite pieces in this work were Orange, The Roger Ebert one, A Hole In The Head, and a few others. Everything within is worth the price of admission by far, however.

[SeriouslyJerome · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose this after enjoying the The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century. Short stories are my friend. And this one is edited by Dave Eggers, so it looked promising.

Once I got past the Readers-Digest-like "lists" of the first section, the second section was full of fascinating fiction & non-fiction selections from different publications, that I would expect a team of high schoolers to pick (& who actually are the selection comity.) It's a collection of mostly edgy & uncomfortable pieces - the kind that kids like because it might shock their parents, & because on some level they can connect to the emotions being conveyed.

I would buy the next edition.

[Jennifer Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been a fan of this series for a long time, but this may be my least favorite of those I've read so far. Unusually, for me, I found that I enjoyed many of the short stories far more than the nonfiction pieces - usually, it's the other way around. The highlights:

The Best American Fax from Don DeLillo - there's probably never been more insightful and thoughtful writing captured in a fax.

Neil Gaiman's short story "Orange," which originally appeared in the Southwest Airlines in-flight magazine (odd, but bravo, Southwest). Joyce Carol Oates' "A Hole in the Head," would have been a close second, if the ending hadn't been a disappointment.

Two of the non-fiction pieces, William Deresiewicz's "Solitude and Leadership" and James Spring's "Mid-LIfe Cowboy."

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not normally something that would cross my radar, but it came up on a library search for Neil Gaiman (and then when I got to the Gaiman story in this collection I realized I'd already read it in his most recent short story book, oops!). Very different pieces of writing, very enriching (well except perhaps for some of the oddball selections like "best Call of Duty screen names" or whatever, most of which I skipped). My memory is so bad that I feel like I don't get as much from anthologies as I do from book-length works - for instance I'm reading (rereading?) a Gaiman anthology because I can't remember if I already read it - but it was a vivid, interesting, enjoyable experience while reading.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favourite edition of this series, but there were still some standout pieces that are fun to retell over beers with friends. The Joyce Carol Oates story about trepanning nearly made me pass out twice, definitely made me say something outloud to myself (or maybe just gasp in horror), and will not be forgotten any time soon. Other standouts included the profile on Roger Ebert (I had no idea!!!) and the last short story of the bunch. I thought I wanted to read a little more Sloane Crosley, but reviews I've read of her work tell me to steer clear. Looking forward to next year's edition and glad that I only borrowed this one.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first foray into the "Best American Non-required Reading" collection, and it was such a refreshing change of pace from everything else I typically read. From the amusing tidbits of the front section to the unusual short stories to the engaging articles, it was a thoroughly delightful experience, and there were only a few pieces of the entire anthology that I didn't love. While the included pieces may not be the absolute "best" (such a subjective matter to begin with) they are all deserving of merit and well worth the short time it takes to read them.

Obviously I can't compare this edition to the others, but I will definitely be picking up future releases.

[Jeff · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read a bunch from this book, but never found anything worthwhile in it. I didn't see the point of DeLillo's fax (but then again I'm not a DeLillo fan), the Mark Twain quotes were not his best, and if Shteyngart's profile of M.I.A. is the best celebrity profile, then I obviously haven't been missing much by not reading any others.

I should have known. This book is a lot like Eggers' writing in general. It shows some initial promise, then quickly peters out, and by the end, you get the idea he hasn't already stopped because he can't figure out how to, even though he doesn't have anything more to say. And through it all, a pointless, nihilistic sadness.