157. One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories
Rating: ☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Author: B.J. Novak
Genre: Fiction, Short Stories, Humor
288 pages, published February 4, 2014
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
One More Thing is a collection of humorous, witty and sometimes surprisingly affecting short stories from B.J. Novak, an actor, writer, and director best known for his work on The Office (where he played Ryan the temp). In one story, a boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes, only to discover that claiming the winnings may break up his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins and asks Tony Robbins himself for help achieving this mission. Author John Grisham contemplates an epic typo. A new arrival in heaven, overwhelmed by infinite options, procrastinates over his long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. One of my favorites is a retelling of the classic fable The Tortoise and the Hare in which a revenge minded hare is obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life.
Quotes
“…slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place.”
“In the aftermath of an athletic humiliation on an unprecedented scale—a loss to a tortoise in a footrace so staggering that, his tormenters teased, it would not only live on in the record books, but would transcend sport itself, and be taught to children around the world in textbooks and bedtime stories for centuries; that hundreds of years from now, children who had never heard of a “tortoise” would learn that it was basically a fancy type of turtle from hearing about this very race—the hare retreated, understandably, into a substantial period of depression and self-doubt.”
“If you love something, let it go.
If you don’t love something, definitely let it go.
Basically, just drop everything, who cares.”
“Regret is just perfectionism plus time.”
“But nobody remembers how long anything takes; they only remember how good it was in the end.”
“You have infinite time here, and there are infinite things to do, but you still don’t end up doing much of it. You do what you love most, over and over.”
“It’s not always enough to be brave, I realized years later. You have to be brave and contribute something positive, too. Brave on its own is just a party trick.”
“I think it’s better to not know certain things. It gives the world an extra bit of mystery, which is important to us as human beings.”
“Being young was her thing, and she was the best at it. But every year, more and more girls came out of nowhere and tried to steal her thing. One of these days I’m going to have to get a new thing, she thought to herself–but as quietly as she could, because she knew that if anyone caught her thinking this thought, her thing would be right over right then.”
“I was sad that summer was over. But I was happy that it was over for my enemies, too.”
“In my opinion, there are two types of perfect. The first is the type that seems so obvious and intuitive to you and everyone else that in a perfect world it would simply be considered standard; but, in reality, in our flawed world, what should be considered standard is actually so rare that it has to be elevated to the level of “perfect.” This is the type of perfect that makes you and most other people think, “Why isn’t everything like this? Why is it so hard to find …” a black V-neck cotton sweater, or a casual non-chain restaurant with comfortable booths, etc.—“that is just exactly the way everyone knows something like this should be?” “Perfect,” we all say with relief when we finally find something like this that is exactly as it should be. “Perfect. Why was this so hard to find?”
The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected and then could never replicate.”
“All eyes are beautiful, I said, which is why it’s such an easy compliment.”
“It is an inside joke of history that all its most exciting adventures inevitably end their careers as homework. Beheadings, rebellions, thousand-year wars, incest on the royal throne, electricity, art, opera, dogs in outer space.”
My Take
My family and I love watching The Office, so I was interested to see what B.J. Novak (who was a creative force on that classic show in addition to playing the somewhat dodgy temp Ryan) would come up with. I also had really enjoyed reading two books by Novak bestie Mindy Kaling. While Novak’s stories are often entertaining and sometimes thought provoking, the collection is a bit uneven. He tackles a wide variety of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Still, I am happy to have read this book, even if I didn’t enjoy it as much as Kaling’s work.
