About The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee

Our selection committee consists of a handful of high school students. One
contingent is in the Bay Area and a second is in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
These students help Dave Eggers edit The Best American Nonrequired Reading.
Daniel Gumbiner is the book's managing editor; Henry W. Leung and Jia Tolentino
are the assistant managing editors facilitating the committee in Michigan.

This collection, published by Houghton-Mifflin, compiles the country's best
fiction, journalism, essays, comics, and humor every year, and introduces
a large readership to dozens of new writers and publications.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading committee comprising
students from dozens of different high schools meets nearly every week of the
year to read, debate, and compile this offbeat but vital anthology.

Want to say something to us? Contact the BANR committee at
nonrequired@gmail.com. We'll read everything you send us.



An Ambiguous Ode to Blogging by Arianna

In the effort to avoid everything I should be doing right now, I am venturing into the world of Blogland; with a hard hat. I’m not sure I agree with blogging to begin with. I don’t like the way that it promotes us all to have complete control over our own perception, and it’s like you can appear to be talking to someone when really your only companion in this solo expose is cyberspace, who, as far as my relationship with it has been, offers no real feedback. You can let loose, eat spicy pizza, wear the same jeans everyday- GO CRAZY! And no one knows, matter of fact, you can maintain a guise that is perfectly aligned with today’s standards of propriety while secretly sitting in your underwear eating a gallon of Ben and Jerry’s. It sets a double standard, you’ve found a loophole, you’ve wriggled yourself out of our boxes, damnit. And that, I guess, is kind of awesome.

-Arianna

1 comment:

The Best American Nonrequired Reading Committee said...

What an awesome way to look at both aspects of blogging! No wait, there's more than just two side... there is no clear, definitive line of division. blogging's a good record of things I guess. Production! Yah!
-Terence