Best American Series

Some truly excellent writing: my particular favorites included Mark Leibovich's profile of Mike Allen, Michael Paterniti's "The Suicide Catcher," and Pamela Colloff's two pieces on a man imprisoned in Texas for years for a crime he didn't commit. Paul Theroux's story "Minor Watt" is creepy-good, too.

What I liked about this book was the great range of topics and writing styles; it was fun to just dip into this volume when I needed a breather from whatever else I was reading at the time and know that I'd find something interesting.… (mais)

The articles in this collection come a variety of magazines, from The New Yorker and Esquire to Sports Illustrated and Automobile. The topics are extremely wide-ranging. There’s James Woods’s review of Marilynne Robinson’s Home. There’s David Lipsky’s Rolling Stone profile of David Foster Wallace. For Esquire, Tom Chiarella writes about his short gig working in a butcher shop; and for GQ, Sean Flynn writes about the competing claims for a piece of James Brown’s estate. All of the articles were finalists or winners in the American Society of Magazine Editors’ 2009 National Magazine Awards.

I found all of the articles interesting to some degree, which confirms my belief that good magazine writing brings life to any topic. It probably helps, too, that I’m generally a curious person who likes to know at least a little bit about a lot of things.

See my complete review, with links to some of the stand-out articles, at Shelf Love… (mais)