The sincerity of the essay fused with the craft of the story, creative nonfiction remains the cornerstone of periodicals like The New Yorker while finding new and edgier voice in journals like McSweeney's.
The foreword and introduction of a book are usually things to be glanced at, gotten through as quickly as possible on the way to the "good stuff." Here, the "good stuff" begins in the foreword, continues into the introduction, and comes to fruition in the double-dozen stories that comprise the meat of The Best American Sports Writing 2009.
Humorist Roy Blount Jr. collects a compendium of words alphabetically to explore their origins, spellings, pronunciations,and various other aspects in as unique and funny a writer's reference book imaginable.
Essays is an eclectic collection of the hyper-talented playwright's musings, interviews, and serious exposition on politics, social responsibility, and the power and excitement of the theatre.
A wide choice of essays from authors both well known and unknown. The good in this collection is really good.
Innovative reportage that spans the subjects of biotechnology, linguistics, zoology, and cosmology, among others.
Featuring fiction, nonfiction, journalism, comics, and humor, The Best American Nonrequired Reading is doubtlessly the most eclectic of Houghton Mifflin's Best American series.
Not merely about sports, these pieces are about the sports figures they catalogue, people with their foibles and finery laid bare.
In homage to the WPA books of the 1930's, 'State by State,' features 50 personal essays on 50 states by 50 writers.
Fifteen essays ranging from childhood to present, some with coming-of-age themes, others about making transitions and embracing change, many about the ways in which we discover our own identities.
David Sedaris' latest collection exhibits, although in fits and starts, some of the same cleverly self-deprecating humor that I've become accustomed to reading from this hilarious author.
'Maps and Legends' is a slim romp through Michael Chabon's love of genre fiction whose high points emerge when the author gets personal, describing how he came to write.
New York Times journalist Sarah Boxer recommends 27 masterpiece blogs in her book.
This fantastic collection of 55 essays is culled from British author Will Self's eponymous "Independent" column and is themed around an intimate acquaintance between Self and his environs.
From Stephen Colbert, the host of television's highest-rated punditry show The Colbert Report, comes the book to fill the other 23˝ hours of your day.
Possible Side Effects explores the concept of cause and effect. It is a cautionary tale in essay form. Be forewarned and read the label: hilarious, troubling, and shocking results might occur.
A Man Without a Country is Kurt Vonnegut’s hilariously funny and razor-sharp look at life, art, politics, and the condition of the soul of America today.
Spalding Gray, America's captivating teller of angst-filled stories, ended his life in 2004, after two gruesome years of suicidal depression...
This book is a collection of conversations between writers and their "mentors," taken from the pages of The Believer, along with previously unpublished conversations.
Frankfurt explores in short order (67 pages) how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying.
George Carlin's irreverent jabs at everything are best appreciated as an audio book, read by the author.
Sarah Vowell, known for her journalistic contributions to PRI's This American Life, travels through the American past and, in doing so, investigates the roads of her own life.
Amy Tan has touched millions of readers. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own.
Irreverent, eclectic, and really really funny, the selections in this book range from jokes to plays and back to essays and interviews. It is not easily classifiable.
Hollis Gillespie recounts and celebrates a childhood that others might soon forget, and adulthood friends who would be impossible to fabricate. Funny!
Why did a successful, busy television personality choose to write yet another book? She says, "I'd rather write a book than read a book. It's like reading, only you get paid for it."
David Sedaris' Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim, another collection of essays based on the diary he has kept every day for some thirty-odd years. While most of these stories have seen print already in Esquire, GQ and the New Yorker, Sedaris' work is so contained and addictive, you can't eat just one.
Naked brings together thirty-one pieces by writers who examine and challenge the way people live with our environment. Edward Abbey's correspondence rants against passive nonresistance. Stacey Richter mines the questionable legacy of John James Audubon, Bruce Chatwin makes a case for nomadism and T. C. Boyle suggests we are all wild at heart, and not particularly well-groomed.
John O’Farrell is a columnist with the Guardian as well as a writer for the TV show Spitting Image and a joke writer for Tony Blair. Global Village Idiot is a reprinting of many of his Guardian columns over the period of time beginning with George W. Bush on the campaign trail and ending on the desert trails leading to Baghdad.
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs reminds me of a drunken night out with friends discussing the parallels between Three's Company and the bible or recounting childhood rules of kickball or other such topics that occupy the minds of the over-educated, under-challenged class.
In "Feeding a Yen," Calvin Trillin's most recent collection of food essays, we tag along as he seeks out such delicacies as
pimientos de Padron in Spain,
pan bagnat in Nice and
boudin in Louisiana. These are foods that comprise Trillin's "Register of Frustration and Deprivation"...
Upon reading only a couple of the essays collected in "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," I knew two things immediately: her voice is one of an unbiased observer who doesn't judge, but merely collects people, places, events, information and structures them so that they are compellingly readable. Secondly, Joan Did ion's prose is some of the most artfully arranged I have ever read.
Geoff Dyer is a man who "lives in London where he spends much of his time wishing he lived in San Francisco." That's what it says on the jacket of "Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It," and it's exactly the feeling of restlessness one gets from Dyer's most recent book.
The latest edition to Houghton Mifflin's Best American Series, "The Best American Nonrequired Reading" flaunts Dave Eggers as its editor, whose bestselling memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," which in 2000 turned him into an overnight pop-cultural icon.
