September 2006
Opinions about scientists; clever cynics; the flop and bawl; a spousal downgrade; the worth of weddings and the World Cup
October 2006
A scary woman; visiting with permafrost experts; an offer from ExxonMobil; toothless writers’ unions
April 2007
Endless craving for misery; a double burial; experimental novels from Slovenia; advice on how to deal with favorites
May 2007
The musical taste of iPods; reconsidering dated smut; thoughts on tinned food; devout Catholic wives
June / July 2007
Breakfast Frappuccinos; bacon-flavored potato chips; effortless use of the American vernacular; lippy kids
August 2007
Index entries on Greil Marcus; life behind the Berlin Wall; antinomians; up with fiction, down with facts
September 2007
The end of the world; kitchen gizzard experiments; a passable Mick Jagger impersonation; a blank-verse novel about werewolves
October 2007
Defending the honor of a pink book; the death of God; ten adult books that aren’t boring; weird chimes
November / December 2007
Helpful cake analogies; hamstring trouble; unreadable Marxist pamphlets; a middle-class twat; doublethink
January 2008
A fact-finding mission; sex education; writers with an eye on posterity; a sun-lounger in France; lovable Millennials
February 2008
Learning to read; a state of bolshiness; a hydrocephalic weakling; cricketers; Titmus, F. J.; hints on a proposed lordship
March / April 2008
Stuff he’s been watching; misery memoirs; unpleasant people doing unkind things; a fascist-killing machine; Juno backlash
May 2008
The fate of a man tired of books; an increase of snazz; the delivery of an unsporting thumping; mortgage payments on boxes
September 2008
Specialization on Doctor Dolittle; breakfast made by a chimp; tolerance of a bare breast; a temporary farewell
May 2010
Learning from eHow; the old days; nude tableaux vivants; failed moneymaking schemes; delicate moral complications
June 2010
An invitation to the Oscars; iconic NHS spectacle styles; the postwar Labour government; LitCologne
July / August 2010
Advice from the Brits; tragicomedy; the Lost Booker Prize; a novel-shaped Manhattan; a pisseur de copie
September 2010
The return of the Scientist of the Month award; small males; possible roles for Miley Cyrus; words from Lorne Michaels
October 2010
Painfully cold sponsored parties; a hunky bad boy; Negative Twenty Questions; the moments on which a life turns
November / December 2010
Shakespeare’s most Tarantinoesque works; instructions on making yogurt; the time before funk; the Mau Mau uprising
January 2011
Literary fattism; sick burns by Dickens’s contemporaries; the difference between Scottish and Irish; Bose headphones
February 2011
Postman Pat; an MP3 of Elizabeth Bishop; diarrhea in the book; the universal love of Céline Dion; good goals and bad goals
March / April 2011
Victimhood; characters who are quite clearly creeps; a gift from the president; cells that grow like kudzu
May 2011
New forms of inadequacy; married bliss; curious descriptors for lovemaking; the Dillon Panthers; homework
June 2011
A worthy opponent; the Hawaiians’ need for the Bible; the favorite television program of Mr. Gum; a bald assertion
July / August 2011
A certain yen; a surprising anecdote; incomprehensible improbability; a man possessing the necessary anxiety; required reading
September 2011
A string of presumptions; the definition of monogamy; Democracy Versus Hot Sex; an ode to Body Shop Vanilla Shower Gel
October 2011
Chopsticks; an example of womanizing both real and prodigious; the gray North Sea; an endorsement of the Waboba ball
November / December 2011
Everybody’s favorite literary biographer; the posher papers; old tosh; Marshalsea debtors’ prison; the blacking factory
January 2012
A lemon-firing bazooka; unbearable quirk; WWOOFers; instances of transgressive and sinister sexual chaos
March / April 2012
A second chance for Sade; plastic carrier bag as madeleine substitute; taunting the fact-checkers; friendship with Woody Allen
May 2012
The definition of creative professional; an epiphanic right-hemisphere production; a theory regarding nonfiction books
June 2012
Passing the point of concern; penal reform; the notion of the second longhand draft; a month of fictional bravery
July / August 2012
The future for writers; a frustrating imagined dialogue; Fitzgerald’s rate; a gum-snap young-adult voice
September 2012
A personal library; the no-snark rule; a “meh” face; the end of the London Olympics; vital supplies
March / April 2013
Assorted woo-hoos; the fashionable Rod Stewart; a very common human propensity; a Christlike alter ego
May 2013
Casting notes; the transcendence of one’s subject; disappointment regarding orgies and uzis; a very long series of questions
June 2013
Asshole paranoia; quantifying the delusions of Kanye West; “Cheat Sheet” and PopEater; uses for a Wonder Bread bag
Introduction: A Note from Jess Walter
The crazy lady in 13B leaned over and asked what I was reading. Hoping to avoid one of those torturous airplane conversations, I simply held up the cover of a newish story collection.
“No. I didn’t ask what you’re reading,” the woman said. “Why?”
Why? And in a moment of sheer stupefaction I will regret the rest of my life,