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One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories
by B. J. Novak

Published: 2014-02-04
Hardcover : 288 pages
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B.J. Novak's One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut that signals the arrival of a brilliant new voice in American fiction.

A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes—only to discover that ...
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Introduction

B.J. Novak's One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut that signals the arrival of a brilliant new voice in American fiction.

A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes—only to discover that claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins—turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new arrival in Heaven, overwhelmed with options, procrastinates over a long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We meet Sophia, the first artificially intelligent being capable of love, who falls for a man who might not be ready for it himself; a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who try to figure out how to host an intervention in the era of Facebook.  Along the way, we learn why wearing a red T-shirt every day is the key to finding love, how February got its name, and why the stock market is sometimes just . . . down.

Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element just that might make a person complete. Across a dazzling range of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices, the many pieces in this collection are like nothing else, but they have one thing in common: they share the playful humor, deep heart, sharp eye, inquisitive mind, and altogether electrifying spirit of a writer with a fierce devotion to the entertainment of the reader.

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Notes From the Author to the Bookclub

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

…[a] very funny debut collection of stories…Mr. Novak has an idiosyncratic voice that's distinctively his own, though One More Thing…will also produce lots of comparisons to other writers. His more fully developed stories have a sense of the absurdities—and sadnesses—of contemporary American life reminiscent of George Saunders's short fiction. Others will more likely elicit comparisons to David Sedaris's books (without the curmudgeonly persona), Steve Martin's prose pieces (with less conceptual strangeness) and Woody Allen's Without Feathers and Side Effects (with less emphasis on big, existential questions). It is Mr. Novak's gift for channeling the way we talk and think today that propels many of the funnier tales here.

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Member Reviews

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by Heather W. (see profile) 02/08/22

 
  "One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories"by Shirley B. (see profile) 05/14/14

The stories, at times, are very graphic. The whole book reads as stand-up comedy.

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