52 Short Stories

Here are some Books I wish I had been assigned in Middle School and High School I used to hate rating. So much so in fact that for most of high school, I got by reading SparkNotes alone. When I went to grad school, I lived on campus my first year, but that proved to be financially impossible to maintain so I decided to commute...3 and a half hours round trip, 4 days a week. Music and thinking about life worked for a while, but sitting in traffic day after day left me feeling like I was wasting my life -- or at the very least, doing something wrong. Enter, audio books. Which eventually led me to actually finish reading my first novel in about a decade, and I was so proud of my accomplishment that I decided to start keeping track of every single book I read or listened to. The list has grown long now because I discovered that there are actually in existence quite a lot of books and authors I enjoy reading -- I just had not been introduced to them or at least not introduced properly. So i...

Dear "Gail Neiman", All my favorite writers are dead,  so I am reluctant to make a declarative statement regarding any feelings I may have regarding you and your works. Some of my favorite writers died before I was born (ex. Mark Twain, JRR Tolkien). Others died before I discovered them (ex. Michael Crichton -- whose work by way of Spielberg was known to me long before I knew of Crichton). And others died before I could meet them (ex. Ray Bradbury and Terry Pratchett). Finally, some I did not discover until after they had died, even though we walked the Earth for a long time together (ex. Ursula K. Le Guin). My point is Mr. "Neiman", it is likely that I am not in anyway metaphysically linked to their deaths, however, I do completely understand, if given the circumstances, you are not interested in attending the upcoming writer’s conference that I am hosting. And to be on the safest of sides, I extend this invitation to you as an attendee and not as a guest of...