So I got to read an assortment of fiction, essays, mystery stories (also fiction), nonrequired reading (also some fiction - GODZILLA!), science fiction and fantasy (also fiction), travel pieces, science pieces, and sports writing -- two of each! Like a Forrest Gump sampler box of chocolates, except none with cherries in them or that time I had a chocolate the chocolatier put turmeric in and it was just weird. Even the sports writing, and I'm pretty much the least sports-interested person you could ever meet, was good.

Uh, Meghan as I am sure you are thinking, it's called the best series and you're surprised that it was actually good.

Yes. Shut up.

So here's the info, i.e. I copy and pasted the table of contents and put my thoughts in parentheses.

The Best American Short Stories 2017:

FIONA MAAZEL: Let’s Go to the Videotape (jerk dad story)

JESS WALTER: Famous Actor (jerk people have jerk sex with each other's jerk selves)


The Best American Essays 2017:

EMILY MALONEY: Cost of Living (yeah, Americans, I know that like 49% of you or whatever despise Obamacare, but seriously, your multi-payer system is ridiculous, seriously ridiculous);

ALIA VOLZ: Snakebit (ophidiophobia)


The Best American Mystery Stories 2017:

TRINA COREY: Flight (murder mystery in a nursing home)

BRENDAN DUBOIS: The Man from Away (revenge fantasy)


The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017:

VIET DINH: Lucky Dragon (atomic bomb fallout, fiction)

MASHA GESSEN: Autocracy: Rules for Survival (Trump sucks)


The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017:

JOSEPH ALLEN HILL: The Venus Effect (like Margaret Atwood's Happy Endings, but about race and brutal)

N. K. JEMISIN: The City Born Great (Cities live, didn't really grab me)


The Best American Travel Writing 2017:

STEPHANIE ELIZONDO GRIEST: Chiefing in Cherokee (one of the three that left me with a meh, the others being "Rules for Survival" and "The City Born Great".)

DAVID KUSHNER: Land of the Lost (he went to Iceland. I went to Iceland. Hooray!)


The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017:

SONIA SMITH: Unfriendly Climate (Texas is weird)

DAVID EPSTEIN: The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene (some people are much better researchers than I am)


The Best American Sports Writing 2017:

BOMANI JONES: Kaepernick Is Asking for Justice, Not Peace (I can't remember reading this one, so I guess that might say something about it)

LUKE CYPHERS AND TERI THOMPSON: Lost in America (it was sad, but then it got better, but then I realised there were all these other people not profiled in the story for whom it didn't get better and so I was sad again :( And, either "Lost in America" was the best one in the set or I'm a victim of the recency effect, but "Lost in America" is the piece that stuck with me. That and "The Venus Effect", which is in the middle, so I guess that one is truly, not only brain-trick, memorable.)


The Best American Series 2017 by assorted (like a Quality Street Tin!) went on sale October 3, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Fiction ** 1/2
The stories are readable, but hardly classic. One of the science fiction entries is a pointed barb at what it means to be Black in America rather than actually being science fiction. The author is clever and has a large vocabulary, but the story goes on to the point of tedium.

Non-fiction ****1/2
The non-fiction entries are far stronger. There is a fascinating science story of a woman who diagnosed her own extremely rare medical condition. There is also a very moving sports story of several basketball players from Cameroon, and one from Serbia, who are brought to the US and terribly exploited at a small, scam, not-really college, but end up experiencing the best of what America can be. This one should make you cry. And another story of a man lost in Iceland, who discovers the best of that country's hospitality. ( )