Fred Noland

Autobiographical anecdotes, vignettes, and random musings abound in this collection of 4- to 8-page short stories pulled together from various anthologies, The New Yorker, and Fred Noland's sketchbooks.

It's heaped together in a bit of a haphazard jumble, bouncing around in time and space, These many moments from Noland's life don't really start to congeal into a portrait of the man until late in the book, like working a jigsaw puzzle where many pieces are missing at the end. His best stories revolve around his bicycling hobby, and I wish the book had been trimmed down to focus on that facet of his life.

First aside: The hand lettering in this book is awful, causing me to struggle too many times to discern words and figure out sentences. And the few times the lettering is typeset, the absolute smallest font size has been chosen. I had to drag out my magnifying glasses to read chunks of this.

Second aside: This book perpetrates one of my pet peeves -- tables of contents with page numbers in a book that has no page numbers on any of the pages. And there is plenty of room in the bottom margin to have included them! To make it even worse, the table of contents is broken up into four parts scattered throughout the book. Why??!!??

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Crayola 64 -- Memories from Third Ward -- Black and White -- It's the Thought That Counts -- Taco Tuesday -- Through the Looking Glass -- P.I.M. - Pandemic-Induced Malaise -- Chicken Same -- The Mic -- Scatterbrain -- Fais do-do -- East Texas 1987 -- Bonton '92 -- Circus Peanut -- Matt D. -- Ranch Style -- I Wanna Live -- Now That Guy Was Really Something -- When the Levi Breaks -- Lucky -- October 27th, 2013 -- Gone 1/16/14 -- Vallejo -- Little Bird -- Infowars -- 01/21/17 -- Crochet -- Crosstrain -- Fish Don't Have Feelings -- Mulholland Pub -- Old Dog -- Smokehouse -- Saturday, December 30th -- Cut, But Not Bleeding -- The Wheel -- You Can Call Me Clyde -- Citycation Blues -- Offering -- Gonna Fly Now -- Happiness -- Ahn's -- Austin -- Austin (Day Two) -- Greenspoint Houston (Wednesday) -- Keeping Up -- In the Flow: A Cycling Story -- Grand Theft Auto -- Best Chef Ever -- Dating in a Bubble -- 2020 Year in Review -- Mitzvah -- The Big Jab -- Target -- Saturday's Ride -- Dream -- Steady Rollin' Man -- Truth Bomb -- Stop Asian Hate -- Represent -- The Scooter Menace -- Positively 14th Street… (altro)