The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected--and most popular--of its kind. The Best American Essays 2005 includes Roger Angell · Andrea Barrett · Jonathan Franzen · Ian Frazier · Edward Hoagland · Ted Kooser · Jonathan Lethem · Danielle Ofri · Oliver Sacks · Cathleen Schine · David Sedaris · Robert Stone · David Foster Wallace · and others Susan Orlean, guest editor, is the author of My Kind of Place, The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, and Saturday Night. A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1982, she has also written for Outside, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Vogue.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
weakest one yet:
I read this series every year, and usually love it, but this edition is rather weak, and I'm surprised, I like and respect Susan Orlean's work, and I would have thought that she would pick better essays. Alas, it isn't so. There are no essays that are truly, truly exceptional. Some are quite good, like Franzen (no surprise there), Kitty Burns Florey, Danielle Ofri (again no surprise), and Shine. Most fall in the blah category. You could take them or leave them. They aren't bad, but they aren't all that... more info
22 satisfying servings of brain food (and 3 duds):
Guest editor Susan Orlean has served up an anthology of essays that emphasizes intelligent, well-written, powerful works that leave an impression long after one finishes reading them. There is a definite New York / Northeast intelligentsia bias in her selections, and for some reason dogs and cooking appear repeatedly as subjects, but aside from these quirks I feel she has performed her job admirably, and created the strongest volume over the past four years of this series (which is how long I've been... more info
Wonderful Essays!:
Perfect book for vacation reading or for introducing others to what an essay can be. Wide variety of essay styles, and none of them call attention to themselves as actually being "essays."
Too journalistic:
Robert Atwan is an absolutely marvelous editor of this series. But the guest editors, lately, are not literary enough--or rather their choices aren't. When you reread essays selected by Elizabeth Hardwick ('86) or Cynthia Ozick ('98), they hold up beautifully. I'm not sure Orlean's pieces are as timeless. It must be hard, after all these years, to keep finding distinguished new guest editors, so I certainly can't blame Atwan for turning to glossy article writers.
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