Off Ramp - Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere, by Hank Stuever

After reading and enjoying Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present, I wanted to read more of Stuever's writing. I liked this collection of short pieces very much, but without the greater theme to bind them together, it was easy to put down and so it took me ages to finish it. Still, I love his curious and unjaded eye, and thought all the pieces were interesting, but I'll still be looking forward to him writing a book all about one topic again. He reminds me of Jake Halpern, able to take a random topic and grow it, and I hope he does, soon.

Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present, by Hank Steuver

Fantastic adult non-fiction. A look at Christmas, as it is celebrated in Frisco, Texas, over the course of what were probably the most interesting 3 years Steuver could have chosen, starting in 2006, before the bubbles burst, and ending in 2009, when the foreclosures are emptying the McMansions that rang with such expensive bells and glowed with such pricey and complicated lights. Steuver profiled several families, who he followed through the years, and while it read as smooth as fine fiction, the fact that these people are real made it haunting. Wonderful.