Love this series! It is so eclectic, and the best thing is that it is actually edited by a group of high school students (under the guidance of McSweeney's staff.) I think this year's collection is the best yet, it includes the very best of non-fiction, fiction, and even a graphic novel. It had me laughing out loud. A great & FUN read! ( )

I’ve been in a short story mood lately. I guess it’s because I just finished up undergrad, so I’m enjoying the feeling of reading and having time to read, but I want it to feel casual and relatively commitment-free. The day after graduation, some friends and I went to a book store and two of us ended up buying this (for six bucks!). I’m glad I did. There’s an interesting variety: everything from profiles of Bill Clinton from GQ to lists of the last sentences of books published in 2007 to comics to more traditional short stories.

My favorite stories are “Best American Facebook Groups,” “Best American Kurt Vonnegut Writings” (in memorium quotes from Vonnegut’s stories), “Darkness” by Andrew Sean Greer , and “Searching for Zion” Emily Raboteauhttp://www.transitionmagazine.com/articles/zion.htm> Check out the BANR blog here: http://www.bestamericannonrequiredrea... ( )

If you want to read something you won’t normally read – and you want that something to be decent, the Best American Non-Required Reading continues to provide those serendipitous moments of “how come no one brought this to my attention before.” I’m not sure how Eggers does it – how his team of crack stange-oids digs these items out; but continue to dig them out they do.

A couple of years ago, he started splitting the book into two sections, the first being reserved for a strange conglomeration of list-type entries that defy true definition. It is a list of strange bests. Something of this ilk can go wrong too easily, and this year’s entry does just that. There are interesting attempts – things that make you go “hmmm”. But, even when ostensibly interesting – last sentences of books of 2007, facebook groups, diaries – it doesn’t keep your interest. It is cute, and that is all.

But then you will dive into section II - the stories/essays/etc. This is the reason you want to pick up any book from this series. At this point, I want to note an interesting phenomenon. If you are given no warning whether the thing you are about to read is fiction or non-fiction, you may not know for a while. The second item in this section – “The White Train” by J. Malcolm Garcia – is a perfect example. After having read the previous story (an excellent tale titled “Y” by Marjorie Celona that, although it looked like it was going to be one of those self-absorbed stories about a girl in bad circumstances, turned into a nicely told tale of how she became who she is), I was in a fiction frame of mind. And so, it took quite a few paragraphs before I recognized Garcia’s tale was true. His description of how unemployment and recycling have manifested themselves in Buenos Aires – the poor using recycling and a government supplied train to survive – is worth the price of admission on its own.

And the stories and essays continue on – strong, interesting, and readable – with the likes of Steven King’s “Ayana”, Raffi Khatchadourian’s “Neptune’s Navy”, and Andrew Sean Greer’s “Darkness”. Then, about two-thirds of the way in, things slow down. Now, in a normal collection this would be expected. In general, editors select the strong pieces to begin and end the book and often let things slow down around the middle. But that is not the case here. In that strange approach used by the Best American series (one I’ve never understood) the offerings are in alphabetical order based on the author’s name. Through the vagaries of the alphabet and names, the end of this collection tends to contain the longest and weakest pieces. Not that the subject matters are not good; rather that the telling of them seems to go on too long.

And so, this book ends not with a bang, but with a “well, that was good, just not quite as good” whimper. But, even the listless finales cannot detract much from the other fine offerings. As it ever is, go to these collections to find the hidden gems of authorship you might not find elsewhere. ( )