Born out of comedy clubs and bookstores, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak is a collection of 64 humorous short stories. Ranging from two sentences to thirty pages and wholesome to vengeful, the stories are united by a random, absurdist humor.
The book is imaginative, telling the story of the aftermath and rematch of a race between a certain famed tortoise and a hare, how one 5th grader winning a $100,000 prize from a cereal box leads him to his biological father, the tough decision of choosing a lane to drive in and how the indecision almost causes an accident, a light-hearted critique of pointless food reviews, and a step-by-step plan (all costs calculated) on how to most efficiently spill a cup of coffee for a nickel each time.
The stories weren’t written badly or in a confusing way, but the contents of the book could make it confusing and harder to understand. Some of the stories were like briefly looking into someone else’s life. Heyyyyy, Rabbits, for instance, followed a narrator appreciating rabbits, quickly going through internal conflict over buying one, and reaching a solution that kept rabbits uncaged and out of harm’s way. Others like The Walk to School on the Day After Labor Day were simple: in the case of this story, it was just two sentences with an unexpected moral to live by that helps readers find the good in unfortunate situations and stay optimistic.
Novak also includes a section for discussion questions at the end of the book, some of which connect to the short stories—the last question was “why or why not?” which directly referenced a story about an insightful graduation speech on living on the line between ‘why’ and ‘why not’—while others are about the book as a whole, like the questions “did you flip through the book and read the shortest stories first?” and “did you think the book was funny?”
Unlike anthologies of multiple writers which usually offer a greater variety of genres, themes, and voices, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is less likely to appeal to a wider audience, and it isn’t a book that has something for everyone, necessarily. However, every story is a quick read that doesn’t require too much thought, making them feel like witty puns that readers can appreciate in the moment but won’t dwell on.
