The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015

Book 70 of my 2017 Reading Challenge
read from November 4 - December 23

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015

Summary (via the book jacket)
For the past year, a group of high school students met at a publishing house in San Francisco every Monday night to read literary magazines, chapbooks, graphic novels, and countless articles. This committee was assisted by a group of students that met in the basement of a robot shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Together, and under the guidance of guest editor Adam Johnson, these high schoolers selected the contents of The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015. The writing in this book is very essential, if not required, like visiting the Louvre if you're in Paris. In any case, nothing in this book takes place in Paris, as far as we can recall, but it does feature an elephant hunt, the fall of a reality-television star, a walk through Ethiopia, and much more.

My Opinion
As with any collection of stories written by multiple authors, there will be some stories that will be more enjoyable than others and the opinions will vary with each reader.  For myself, there was only one or two complete duds in this book so I liked it overall.  I wasn't familiar with this series when I found this book on the discount shelf of a bookstore but I would seek out another year to read because I like the format and apparently have similar tastes to high schoolers (not surprising given the amount of YA I read).

There were two stories that stood out as favorites for me - "An Inventory" by Joan Wickersham and "Fear Itself" by Katie Coyle.  The best out-of-context line, "The elephant huntress herself dodged the vomit entirely as the bird set a course for the sun.", is from the story "Who Wants to Shoot an Elephant?" by Wells Tower.