The Best of David Foster Wallace

This book hops around so much, I had to read it all the way through because I was so excited to see where it was going.

Plus, half the fun of reading this book was to read the endnotes and discover the sponsors of the various years ("Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad" and "Year of the Whopper" being some of my favorites).

This fantastic book of essays includes probably my favorite piece of "investigative reporting" ever — the title essay, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," about his first Caribbean cruise (on assignment for a magazine). The passages on his guilt over ordering from room service (which is free) had me in stitches.

"Brief Interviews..." is a great collection of short stories. It can sometimes be difficult, but if you take the time to really read them you will find some clever, and hilarious, stories.

At a very definite moment in the middle of the title essay, you realize you're not just reading a report on a lobster festival in Maine...you're knee deep in a moral essay questioning whether or not it's wrong to boil to death a sentient being.

This, after taking Updike to task, a sprawling essay on English usage in popular culture and more footnotes than you will ever have thought humanly possible.

For me, "Consider the Lobster" signaled a major shift in literary life; and a welcome one at that.