Just Finished: Lydia Davis

I read a LOT.  I was even voted Super Reader in 3rd grade (I cried because I was hoping for Best Dressed).  I often get requests for good recommendations, so I'm going to start writing little blurbs about books after I finish them.  Here's the most recent:

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis

Davis compiles heaps of short stories in this 700 page behemoth - but the best thing about a book of short stories is how easily you can skip around.  My favorite section was "Break it Down;" her stories written in 1986.  Davis has an uncanny way of describing exactly how she feels in certain situations without mentioning actual emotions.  Love, lust, shame, hatred, and embarrassment are all subtly relayed through the character's thoughts and actions and the reader is left to freely interpret them.  Although very different from the rest of her short stories, this is one of my favorite passages:

Head, Heart
Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again:
You will lose the ones you love.  They will all go.  But even the earth will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the ears of heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head. Help heart.

Kind of a downer, but touching AND grammatically correct.