Sometimes you need a little hate reading to get through a pandemic.

A collection of stories that are funny and deep, surprising and inevitable. Almond’s writing is full of heart. The stories will make you think about what it means to be human.

Steve Almond is funny, funny, funny and these stories are all of that plus sweet (but not too) and smart. Totally delightful.

Be careful or you might find yourself on thriftbooks ordering everything else Steve Almond has written. These stories absolutely emmanate the tender heartache of everyday life. His cultural notations are as eloquent as they are deep. The characters are you, or someone you know.

Even the acknowledgement make for a good read.

I had the great pleasure of hearing Steve Almond read a slightly abridged version of his story "Appropriate Sex" from this collection and promptly decided I must jump into his stories headfirst. Overall, I was not disappointed.The short stories in this book are heartbreaking, some in beauty and others in despair. Almond's humor and ability to push the reader right to the edge keep these stories from becoming maudlin, particularly when we are forced to look inside ourselves through the lens of hi...

Very funny, somewhat ribald collection of stories about modern love, lust, and mores, with some offbeat detours to interludes with Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass; and an oddball discussion among a pop-culture academic specializing in Michael Jackson and a couple of his friends.I had already read the title story -- in the New Yorker? somewhere else -- so I figured Almond's other short stories would be worth reading. Some laugh-out-loud passages, some poignant moments. I was right. Breezed...

Steve Almond is not only hilarious, but also writes with great insight into human failings and those things that make human connections run awry.

some stories better than others of course but well written. Weird that he mostly writes from a woman's point of view.

I'm nuts for short fiction, and Steve Almond is pretty great at the form. In this collection, his themes and characters are fairly varied. (Almond's more recent book of short stories, God Bless America, is even more varied; I'll review that gem as soon as I can get my hands on a copy and reread it.) The Lincoln/Douglass story is the greatest thematic departure, to the point where I don't think it fits in this book; in fact, I've reread that story several times, and I just don't get it. Inventive...

This is a humorous collection that deals with a wide set of issues like love, death, and politics, with some historical fiction thrown in. Almond’s use of slang and colloquialism in the narrative give the stories a sense of accessibility, but left this reader feeling there is something missing from the narrative, some important emotional element. Not all of the stories feel this way; some are powerful and linger in the mind after reading them. The story, “I am as I am,” is one of these, a coming...

Should Steve Almond bother you? Should you find it condescending that he’s got a reading comprehension test on his website? Should you get the icks from Almond’s writing about teaching the sexy, sexed-up female students in a writing workshop very much resembling his own at Boston College? Should you down some ipecac because his most assured writing in The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories is in a story called “The Idea of Michael Jackson’s Dick”?Ugh, yes. Steve, you have freaked us out.But what’s...

Really good short story collection. Funny, taboo, full of heart. Fave stories were Larsen’s Novel, I Am As I Am, The Problem With Human Consumption, and Wired For Life.

Early Almond that features a little bit of everything. Stories are lively, engaging and varied, with his characteristic wit and insight. The title story was my favorite of the bunch.

The first five stories in this 2005 collection are vignettes, romantic sketches, and domestic slices of life—not as exciting, inventive, or daring as the full-bodied stories in God Bless America (2011), which was my second taste of Steve Almond’s work after discovering a story of his in Tin House . There are boyfriend/girlfriend, college teachers/students, kids at a baseball game scenarios . . . Then came the sixth story, "Lincoln Arisen," which reads like a one-act surreal play (think Pinter...

even though the story "lincoln, arisen" left me a little cold, the rest of this collection was so damned good i couldn't take a star away. expertly narrated and structured - almond is a master of convincingly writing from the perspective of women, men, everyone. each story was tightly wound and left me feeling like i'd been punched in the face by a life lesson. adored this.

A patchy book of stories whose best offerings match up with the likes of Ken Liu but whose worst probably ought to have been omitted entirely.

Pretty good stuff. Almond's writing is clear and engaging, making the book a quick read--which is not to say it is without depth. The stories are driven by people dealing with diverse traumas, whether those be unusual sexual requests or a friend asking another to read his novel manuscript. Almond is a master at quick characterization and wonderful dialogue that pulls off the rare trick of being both true to the character and surprising and insightful.To be totally honest, though, I'm not sure ho...

another blank. i think this is a collection of short stories. i don't remember much beyond that. i will say that i have read some other steve almond stuff, & he's very competent & often very funny. i believe he teaches writing at boston college. so this book is most likely a collection of short stories that are written competently & designed to be mildly funny, & i seem to also recall that they are a little off-kilter in a poor-man's-jonathan-sfaran-foer-school-of-weird-characters way. you know?...

It's always nice to find a writer who knows how to be funny. Being funny isn't easy. Especially when you're a writer, since writers tend to take themselves super seriously. But Almond does take his characters seriously, which is what really makes these stories good, because most of his characters could easily be diagnosed with a variety of psychiatric conditions. But their author isn't worried about classifying them. He doesn't want you to know them in terms of how they don't fit in or the ways