#9 Best American Non-Required Reading 2003

I'm a sucker for these Best American series books. They sell them at the campus bookstore for super cheap and I pick one up whenever I see a new one. I love short fiction and am fascinated with how an author can create characters or a situation that I get invested in with such a short amount of space. It's amazing. Sometimes I wish that I could write fiction. I'm pretty certain that I can't in any meaningful way though.
This is the second book in this particular series and I wasn't very impressed with it. I didn't like more pieces than I liked. It was really hit and miss, whereas with other collections, I like almost all of it. However, it did have a fascinating piece about Saddam Hussein by Mark Bowden from the Atlantic Monthly and a super funny very short piece titled "How to Write a Suspense Story" by James Pinkerton that had me laughing out loud on the bus.
According to the forward, the collection was put together with the help of high school students and it really shows. It seemed to me like a lot of stories were about younger people, mostly high school kids, and how they're horrible to each other. I'm not against reading about cruelty but it all seemed so immature. Blah. If you can find other sources for the Bowden and Pinkteron, I highly recommend them.
After Take Back the Night and It Affects Me Weeks, I'm feeling super gung-ho about activism and feminism so expect a lot of that soon. Thanks for reading all.