Last week I read Tenth of December and after all the great reviews (The Best Book You’ll Read This Year), I expected to be blown away. I expected that I would be buying this book for all my reading friends and talking about how much I loved it. I expected magnificientness. And is the book good: yes. Is it great? Maybe. Was it the best book I read this year? No (that’s probably a tie so far between HHhH and The Bean Trees, neither of which was published in 2013).
You know what short story book blew me away? What Boys Like by Amy Jones. After I finished Tenth of December, I sat thinking why don’t more people know What Boys Like? Those short stories are amazing. Then, amusingly, Salty Ink the next day talked about how amazing What Boys Like is. I follow Amy Jones on twitter. Her twitter personality was not what I expected, but that’s okay too.
So go read Tenth of December. Then go read What Boys Like, which is better.