The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 Edited by Dave Eggers

This was probably the best of the series thus far.

It included the “best American first sentences of novels in 2005”, excerpts from that Chuck Norris website, a very funny piece from Kurt Vonnegut on writing, Julia Sweeney’s “Letting Go of God” piece, comics and many other funny and poignant bits from everywhere.

I don’t have it with me, lest I’d make more notes, but… if you’re ever going to read anything from this series, make this one the first.

The Best American Science Writing 2001 Edited by Timothy Ferris

I touched on this lightly in a previous post, which I’ll reproduce here:

I also read a couple essays from The Best American Science Writing 2001, one about the effects of testosterone and the other about how the catholic church and the inventor of the pill really screwed women over by insisting on the “natural” 28 day cycle, which turns out to be not-so-natural after all. Apparently, pre-industrial women have an average of 100 periods during their lifetime (due to repeated pregnancy and extended breast-feeding), compared to the modern woman’s average of around 400. The increased number of cycles is the catalyst for diseases(such as cervical cancer) that happen very rarely to women in non-industrialized cultures. Had the inventor of the pill not been so all-fired driven to appease the catholic church’s desire for a”natural” cycle, many women might have had access to the types of birth controls that are just now coming into vogue where they’re on the drug for 3 months or more without break, reducing the total lifetime ovulations and accompanying risks. Interesting stuff.

Also of note:

– Decoding the human genome and the story behind the public sector vs. private sector companies involved.

– The use of DNA in trials

– The attitudes of South African government that are hurting the battle against the AIDS epidemic

– An unsettling piece about SV40, a simian virus, a possible culprit in some cancers, that has made its way into the human population, possibly because of the polio vaccine many years ago.

– How and why the Roswell UFO legend got started

Ironically, one of my favorite authors, the late Stephen Jay Gould, wrote a piece about Syphillus that I got bored with and skipped. They can’t all be gems.

The Best American NonRequired Reading 2004 Edited by Dave Eggers

My guilty favorite of the Best American series, filled with pieces chosen by high schoolers. Mixture of essays, stories, comics, whatever they feel like putting in there.

Highlights of this one are:

We Have a Pope!: An imagining of a marketing master trying to manipulate the system to get the first American pope. Funny.

The Hidden Lives of Lakes: People of a small, wintry village notice that underneath the ice of their lake, all of the people who ever died in their town seem to be living a watery second life.

The Fifteen Year Layover: I thought that Tom Hanks movie was based on a true story, but here’s another one about a man who has lived in an airport for 15 years.

Transmissions from Camp Trans: The story of the alternative protest camp (Camp Trans) that happens on the outskirts of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival in the wilds of Michigan each August. MWMF prohibits trans women from attending, and this is the story of one summer fighting the good fight.