Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules

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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, a collection of stories edited and introduced by David Sedaris (Simon & Schuster, 2005).

I read this as slowly as I possibly could, hoping that he'd have a new collection of essays out by the time I finished, but no dice.

Some of the stories that really stuck out to me were ones I'd already read (e.g., "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri; "People Like That Are the Only People Here" by Lorrie Moore--who every once in a while has a wonderful, perfect sentence; and "Cosmopolitan" by Akhil Sharma) but this was an interesting collection.

Among others, Sedaris also included "Oh, Joseph, I'm So Tired" by Richard Yates, "Gryphon" by Charles Baxter, "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield, "Half a Grapefruit" by Alice Munro, "Applause, Applause" by Jean Thompson, "Where the Door Is Always Open and the Welcome Mat Is Out" by Patricia Highsmith, "Song of the Shirt, 1941" by Dorothy Parker, "The Girl with the Blackened Eye" by Joyce Carol Oates, "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Irish Girl" by Tim Johnston, and "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff.

Side note: Purchase of this book helps support 826NYC, a nonprofit tutoring center in Brooklyn, New York.