The Insomniac Reader

Book #41 was The Insomniac Reader: Stories of the Night, a collection of short stories edited by Future Tense Books publisher/Powell's Bookstore employee Kevin Sampsell.

Far from being a cure for insomnia, The Insomniac Reader features a riveting collection of consistently solid stories that are bound to keep you up all night. The stories explore the often sordid and always strange things that happen in the wee hours of the night while most of us are at home sleeping comfortably in our beds.

Contributors to the collection include fellow blogger Jonathan Ames, Rick Moody, Jonathan Lethem, Found Magazine creator Davy Rothbart, T Cooper, Aimee Bender, Dan Kennedy, Dave Eggers (writing under the pseudonym Lucy Thomas) and many others. My favorite stories were Ames' 'Everybody Dies In Memphis', Monica Drake's 'Gymkhana', Michelle Tea's 'Fourteenth Street', Richard Rushfield's strange 'Stalker's Paradise', and Marshall Moore's 'The Right Way To Eat A Bagel'.

For a more detailed review check out The Austin Chronicle or The Portland Tribune