The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011 is always a good way to find new authors to read. This edition has an introduction by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro most well-known for Pan's Labyrinth. This edition only has one story that I had previously come across, Chris Jones' excellent profile for Esquire: "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man." In fact most of my favorite pieces in this collection were nonfiction pieces: Gary Shteyngart's profile of M.I.A. for GQ, "An Oral History of Adama Bah" a disturbing story of American injustice following in the wake of post 9/11 excesses against Muslims, Tim Crother's "Game Of Her Life" for ESPN The Magazine-about a young, female African chess prodigy, William Deresiewicz's moving speech to a West Point graduating class from The Amateur Scholar-"Solitude and Leadership", Charlie LeDuff's analysis of what has gone wrong in Detroit-"What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?", Mac McClelleand's report on the struggles of the Karen people being chased out of Myanmar in "For Us Surrender Is Out Of The Question",  Michale Paterniti's GQ profile of a man who tries to prevent suicides on a busy bridge in Nanjing "The Suicide Catcher", and James Spring's story of tracking down a fugitive family in Mexico, "Mid-Life Cowboy," for This American Life.  My two favorite short stories were "Second Lives" by Daniel Alarcon and "Weber's Head" by J. Robert Lennon. All in all, it is a pretty solid collection.