A review by swoody788
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013 by Dave Eggers

2.0

Glad to be done with this wretched book. The writing is great, yes, but the content was too disturbing and/or depressing for my tastes. I kept reading, hoping for at least one uplifting, feel-good tale, but it never came (except for maybe The Blind Faith of the One-Eyed Matador, and even that wasn't enough to redeem the book although it did lead me to some spectacularly gruesome YouTube videos of bullfighting). The high school kids that chose these selections as the best of the best need to turn off their emo music and spend more time outside in the fresh air. There's nothing wrong with an unsettling story here and there but Every. Single. One. Come on guys! I did enjoy a few selections, and now that I think about it, they were the only nonfiction ones - Hannah and Andrew, Finding Oscar, and the aforementioned The Blind Faith of a One-Eyed Matador. And the all-too-brief Best American Yada Yada Yada was by far my favorite, as are all things Seinfeld.