Books › One more thing
One more thing
276 pages
A rapid-fire carousel of modern fables that masks its tender, beating heart behind layers of sharp, absurdist comedy.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like sitting next to the smartest, funniest person at a party as they spin increasingly bizarre but deeply relatable yarns. The pace is incredibly brisk, with stories ranging from a few punchy paragraphs to longer explorations of modern neuroses. It wraps you in a mood that is at once playful and slightly wistful, using high-concept, absurdist premises to sneak up on you with genuine emotional resonance. The prose is sharp, conversational, and heavily reliant on impeccable comedic timing. It will absolutely delight fans of observational humor and quirky short fiction who appreciate a laugh-out-loud joke that leaves a lingering, existential aftertaste.
- Mood
- quirky
- conversational
- wistful
- clever
- Tone
- wry
- absurdist
- playful
- satirical
- tender
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- modern absurdity · search for connection · existential neuroses · human fallibility · pop culture saturation
- The writing
- Sharp, conversational, and deceptively breezy, driven by impeccable comedic timing and punchy dialogue.
- The arc
- Bounces playfully through high-concept comedic setups before landing on surprisingly poignant, vulnerable truths about modern life.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love smart, observational humor and bite-sized stories that mix surreal premises with relatable everyday anxieties.
Content notes
- existential dread
- mild sexual content
- death and the afterlife
About the book
"B.J. Novak's One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut that signals the arrival of a brilliant new voice in American fiction. A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes--only to discover how claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins--turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new arrival in Heaven, overwhelmed with options, procrastinates over a long-ago promise to visit his grandmother. We also meet Sophia, the first artificially intelligent being capable of love, who falls for a man who might not be ready for it himself; a vengeance-minded hare, obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life; and post-college friends who try to figure out how to host an intervention in the era of Facebook. Along the way, we learn why wearing a red T-shirt every day is the key to finding love, how February got its name, and why the stock market is sometimes just. down. Finding inspiration in questions from the nature of perfection to the icing on carrot cake, One More Thing has at its heart the most human of phenomena: love, fear, hope, ambition, and the inner stirring for the one elusive element that might just make a person complete."--
Description from Open Library.
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