One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories Author: B. J. Novak | Language: English | ISBN:
B00EGMQIIQ | Format: PDF
One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories Description
B.J. Novak's
One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut that signals the arrival of a brilliant new voice in American fiction.
A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes—only to discover that claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins—turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new arrival in Heaven, overwhelmed with options, procrastinates over a long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We meet Sophia, the first artificially intelligent being capable of love, who falls for a man who might not be ready for it himself; a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who try to figure out how to host an intervention in the era of Facebook. Along the way, we learn why wearing a red T-shirt every day is the key to finding love, how February got its name, and why the stock market is sometimes just . . .
down.
Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake,
One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element just that might make a person complete. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the many pieces in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor, deep heart, sharp eye, inquisitive mind, and altogether electrifying spirit of a writer with a fierce devotion to the entertainment of the reader.
From the Hardcover edition.- File Size: 1188 KB
- Print Length: 290 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0385351836
- Publisher: Knopf (February 4, 2014)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00EGMQIIQ
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #627 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Humor & Satire > Literary Humor - #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Short Stories - #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Short Stories
- #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Humor & Satire > Literary Humor - #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Short Stories - #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Short Stories
I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading B.J. Novak's book of short stories, ONE MORE THING. Actually, I guess I did have certain expectations. I expected a typical collection of a dozen or so short stories. There are more than sixty short stories in ONE MORE THING, ranging from just a few words to about 20 pages long.
And I suppose I also had expectations about the kinds of stories that would be contained in the collection, or about the style of writing. The very first story, "The Rematch," took those expectations and shook them up. It's a sly story about a rematch between the tortoise and the hare. That's all I want to tell you about it.
There is a humorous slant to these stories, but they're not just funny. There's a perspective to them that's creative and unique. They're well written, clever and are exactly as long as they need to be. None of them run out of steam before they are done and, just as importantly, none of them feel like they're ended just to be done with them. (The shortest ones are hit and miss for me, but I don't really have an appreciation for micro-fiction as it is. Perhaps in time.)
I wouldn't say there's a common theme throughout the collection, although some of the stories do relate to each other in subtle, fun ways, and many of them end with a satisfying punch or punch line. I feel like many of these stories began with a musing (some of the musings you, yourself, may have had before, and some you'll wonder why it hadn't ever occurred to you) and were deconstructed in order to be presented in a fresh way.
As I continued reading, I was frequently wowed with the subsequent stories. And then I came to "Kellogg's," a story with a long subtitle about a boy who wins $100,000 from a box of cereal and goes to collect his prize.
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