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kristensushi's review against another edition
5.0
One of my favorite collections of short stories, this book had me giggling from beginning to end. It would deserve five stars for the design alone, but the prose just happens to live up to it. It's quirky and absurd, and I would recommend it to anyone with an offbeat sense of humor.
natesea's review against another edition
4.0
This is a fun collection that is as entertaining to hold as it is to read; very McSweeney's-esque in its package. Quirky, funny, dark, and thoughtful tidbits from a great local author.
rosseroo's review
2.0
I stumbled across and loved Boudinot's debut collection of short stories, The Littlest Hitler, but haven't caught up with his two subsequent novels. So when I saw this oblong little thing, I grabbed it for my train commutes. I don't know if it's the brevity of the twelve stories (they generally take no more then 5-10 minutes to read), or the ill-conceived layout (the typeface for each is pitched to the story's contents or mood, which seems like something I might have done my first year as a designer), but none of them particularly grabbed me. At the heart of most is a genuinely interesting premise, but they tend to have a dashed-off feel, and could use a little more room to breathe and grow.
I especially liked "Readers & Writers" -- about two men who run into each other on a commute and discover they are reading, and have read, the exact same books their entire lives. But I wanted it to go deeper and further than it can in 17 half-pages. A lot of the stories have some kind of basis in pop culture ("The End of Bert and Ernie" is a riff on the breakup of the Sesame Street couple; "An Essay and a Story About Motley Crue" reads like Chuck Klosterman riffing on adolescent dreams), or in speculative fiction ("Robot Sex" is about what it sounds like; "Cardiology" is about a town where everyone has to stay hooked up to a centralized heart), or in work culture ("The Armies of Elfland" is "Office Space" meets Colin Meloy's Wildwood series; "Monitors" and "The Mine" are decent glimpses at how we let work control us). On the whole, these read like morsels of fluff for McSweeny's website.
I especially liked "Readers & Writers" -- about two men who run into each other on a commute and discover they are reading, and have read, the exact same books their entire lives. But I wanted it to go deeper and further than it can in 17 half-pages. A lot of the stories have some kind of basis in pop culture ("The End of Bert and Ernie" is a riff on the breakup of the Sesame Street couple; "An Essay and a Story About Motley Crue" reads like Chuck Klosterman riffing on adolescent dreams), or in speculative fiction ("Robot Sex" is about what it sounds like; "Cardiology" is about a town where everyone has to stay hooked up to a centralized heart), or in work culture ("The Armies of Elfland" is "Office Space" meets Colin Meloy's Wildwood series; "Monitors" and "The Mine" are decent glimpses at how we let work control us). On the whole, these read like morsels of fluff for McSweeny's website.
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