As usual, pretty enjoyable section of short front matter. Tom Barbash's "The Women" was an interesting read, and Joshua Bearman's "Art of the Steal" was excellent. Neil Gaiman's "Orange" alone is probably worth getting this volume for, as was Chris Jones' profile of Roger Ebert. I had read Michael Paterniti's "The Suicide Catcher" somewhere before, but enjoyed revisiting it here. ( )

Not nearly as good as past years. Pleiades and Kicked Out of Paris are standouts. ( )

A collection of fiction and non-fiction from 2010, selected by Dave Eggers and a committee of high school students. It's a good, solid collection, overall. Some of the short stories were more to my taste than others, but they're all decent, and the non-fiction pieces are almost always interesting and sometimes very moving. And for a series created specifically to showcase American writing, it has an impressively global flavor, featuring glimpses into such far-flung places as Uganda and China.

What surprised me, though, is just how dark so much of the subject matter is. There are couple of pieces that are simply entertaining and fun: Sloane Crosley's wacky adventures in Paris, an article about a bank robber who, on his arrest, revealed all his secrets to the police (because, hey, who doesn't like a good heist story?). But mostly it's a cavalcade of poverty, injustice, violence, and bad things happening to not-always-bad people. It's not all unremittingly bleak, to be sure, but some of it is very disturbing indeed. Mac McClelland's piece about the technically-not-considered-a-genocide genocide of the Karen people in Burma is particularly difficult to read.

Not that I'm complaining about this, by any means. Sometimes the most distressing stories are the ones that most need to be told, and listened to. But, considering that these were all chosen by high school students, I find myself thinking two simultaneous things. One is that I greatly admire their social consciousness, which is surely much more well-developed than my own was at that age (and maybe, if I'm honest, more than it is even now). But the other is a feeling of sadness at the thought that, when these kids look out at the world they're about to inherit, this is mostly what they see.

Anyway. This is the first of the Nonrequired Reading series that I've read, but it's not going to be the last. Although I can't help hoping, perhaps foolishly, for a few more glimmerings of joy and optimism from the 2012 kids. ( )

I love these series. I think my favorite story of the year is "Orange" by Neil Gaiman. Great story.
Some of the non-fiction in here was amazing - parciularly the Suicide Catcher and the Mid-Life Cowboy. Great and touching articles.
The beginning section, which is often the funniest, was strangely flat this year. Maybe not a lot of stuff to laugh at in 2010. Although, I doubt it. ( )

Best Best in a few years I think... ( )