I am bored cubicle rat!

Hello, hello -- Felix Little checking in here. I just had a pleasant lunchtime art-viewing session with Eliot and another one of my friends, and suddenly my little cube seems terribly drab. Eating dry sandwiches at the desk and breathing in the scent of new printer paper and Accent highlighters -- my oh my, it doesn't get much more exciting than this, now does it?

Thus, I am going to use this post to gush about my favorite new anthology, which I discovered months ago and have been in raptures about since.

This is kind of my admission that I am secretly a huge sap and I adore love stories more than anything else. But!!! This collection is so, so shiny and beautiful and unexpected. It's edited by Jeffrey Euginedes, and though the only thing I've read of his has been The Virgin Suicides, but his command of language is just breathtaking. Middlesex is definitely on my list of must-reads though... And this lovely Valentine's Day anthology comes to us from McSweeney's, which is just about my favorite online lit mag to check ever, so I'm not surprised that it is a gem of an anthology.

A couple amazing stories that must be read:

"The Moon in Its Flight" - Gilbert Sorrentino

So pretty, so heartbreaking. Pure teenage love, plus some nifty literary tricks. The use of metafiction here is so very well done and it never distances you from the emotion in the story.

"First Love and Other Sorrows" - Harold Brodkey

There are two stories by Brodkey in this anthology -- this one and "Innocence," which chronicles a very persistent narrator's attempts to pleasure his college girlfriend. This one - the story of a boy watching his sister fall into a socially/financially desirable marriage and leave the family - definitely won me over though. Emotionally complex and exploring different types of love (first crushes, marriage-seeking and also familial love), this was a lovely choice for first story in the book.

"The Hitchhiking Game" - Milan Kundera

What happens when we pretend to be other people. Do we lose our sense of self? Do we lose our connection to each other? A perfectly angsty little addition.

"The Lady With The Little Dog" - Anton Chekhov

I was trying to decide which classic short story I was more excited to see in here -- this one or "The Dead" by James Joyce. Though I'll always adore Joyce, I really love the simplicity of this story and the way that Checkhov paints his adulterous characters so sympathetically. Really, really nice story to read and reread.

Andddd YEP. I could probably provide an OMGZAMAZINGILOVEIT synopsis for almost every story in here, but I'll leave it at this.

Expect a creative post soooooon! I'm feeling inspired.

<3, Felix