For George Saunders, “crafting a good story means not condescending to your reader. It means creating sentences that clue them into something unnoticed about the character, and allowing them to figure it out.”

Cleaning up my bookshelves the other day I came across George Saunders’ absurd, humorous and terrifying short novel, “The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil”.  It’s been a few years at least since I read it, but every time I notice it on the shelf I want to pick it up and become reacquainted with it.

It was one of those books I came across while working in the stockroom at Barnes & Noble, was intrigued by but promptly forgot the title and author of as I unpacked forty or fifty more boxes.  So it was some time later that, needing to de-stress after a shift, I wandered up and down the fiction aisle just glancing at spines looking for clever titles that sounded interesting.

(This is the exact same scenario that led me to “The End of the Alphabet” so I think I can safely say the ‘wandering around picking books entirely because of interesting titles’ method works well for me.)

Anyway, I stumbled back upon George and Phil and this thin, yet eye-catching book.  In fact, I am between books right now, I may need to stumble upon it again today….

In the meantime, you should check out George Saunders Explaining How to Tell a Good Story from The Atlantic.