I started reading McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales a couple of months ago. McSweeney's, in case you didn't know is kind of a collective of bright young writers based out of San Francisco and starring Dave Eggers (he of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and Michael Chabon (he of pulitzer prize winning The Amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay) among others. MMTTT, in addition to being an issue of the celebrated quarterly "Magazine" edited by Eggers (and guest edited by Chabon among others), is a collection of short to longish short stories of the mostly pulpy variety, written by the nations most venerable contemporary fiction writer. It's a veritable who's who of the New York Times Bestseller list: Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Chabon, Eggers, Michael Crichton, Michael Moorcock, Nick Hornby, Elmore Leonard, Harlan Ellison (to name a few). I tried to read the stories in sequence, but as the time of my needing to return it to the library neared closer, I began to get more selective in my choices (to date I have still not read Moorcock's The Case of the Nazi Canary, but more because I started a couple of pages in and couldn't justify a piquing of interest, rather than any particular time constraint).

On the day I had to return the book (and due to my inability to read dates correctly, I thought it was due the day before it was due, and missed out on a full day's worth of reading), I began Rick Moody's The Albertine Notes. It was a page turner like none I've read in a long time (not since Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet's pre-apocalyptic comedy Good Omens). I stood outside the closed library for twenty minutes trying to finish as much as I could of the 66 page tale. Slow-reader that I am, I resigned myself to the conclusion that unless I stood outside the library for another two hours, I would not get the story finished tonight. I slipped the book into the return slot and came home
to sign up for a spot in the Holds line and cross my fingers that I might get the book again in time to remember what I had read that had captured my attention so well (an irony for a story so concerned with forgetting).