Two Stories from One Story, One from Steve Almond, and a Novel

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Given the reasonable subscription price and the time-friendly format, it's not difficult to read everything published by One Story. The stories are also consistently excellent, so I feel like it's saying something that these two have stood out in my mind:

"Culottes" by Eileen FitzGerald (One Story, Issue Number 82, October 20, 2006)

"What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us" by Laura van den Berg (One Story, Issue Number 102, March 10, 2008)

I finally finished Steve Almond's The Evil B.B. Chow and Other Stories (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005). Steve Almond's stories typically feature great beginnings and witty, acerbic observations. I'd read some of his other writing (e.g., the novel he co-wrote with Julianna and many of his dead-on essays for Poets and Writers) and admired his style. In The Evil B.B. Chow, though, he does use language and subject matter that are more graphic than he might use in, say, a P&W essay. At any rate, the story that really got me was one toward the end: "Wired for Life," which originally appeared in The Missouri Review.

And I'm going to add one other book here, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (first published in 1847). I just find it remarkable that this novel, comprised of plot points that make it seem almost impossibly dated, can still strike a chord.