It is not my usual practice to review a book that is (as of this writing) almost a year old, but “Hey You A**holes” by Kyle Seibel is not a usual book. The first unusual thing is the title, which cannot be printed in its full form in a family newspaper like the Tribune, but is proudly front and center on the book’s actual cover. It’s a title that could be read as a direct, profane address to the potential audience, a provocative and intriguing choice. The title itself is a window into the humor and humanity that Seibel infuses throughout this collection of 32 short stories (some of them very short) about the overlooked, somewhat downtrodden, but not wholly defeated members of society. Seibel’s figures are the fast-food workers, the salvage workers, the half-employed, andthe stories explore the ways life visits indignities upon them because they have been consigned to a kind of semi-invisible underclass. This description makes the stories sound like kind of a drag, but it’s really the opposite. These stories are funny, ironic and arch, and Seibel writes in a colloquial and free-spirited style that I could not get enough of. A significant part of the stories’ power comes from Seibel’s great facility with an opening line. You can almost pick a story at random and immediately experience the spark of energy that animates his work. From a story titled “Cullen”: “As a defensive measure, Cullen taped garbage bags to his windows. Black One. Double-layered. He’d been awake since Tuesday. Hadn’t left the house since Friday.” From a story titled “Mr. Dubecki’s Secret Menu”: “Mr. Dubekci is the first person I tell about the people humping in the men’s restroom because he is the franchise owner slash store manager for one thing, but also because he’s the only other person here after Greg went home sick and Rocky’s brother picked him up early and the new girl who’s training on the window would only get in the way so she got cut and Mr. Dubecki came by to help me close.” The story is set in a Taco Bell. The narrator is a good, but maybe disengaged kid, the kind of person we’re expected to take no notice of and one who puts little stock in himself. But in fewer than 2,000 words, Seibel manages to bring to life not just the narrator, but Mr. Dubecki too, while also shedding a light on the way the world seems designed to thwart our attempts at connection and happiness. Again, I’m making it sound like a drag, but Seibel is working in the tradition of writers like George Saunders, Etgar Keret, Arthur Bradford and the late Gabe Hudson, other writers who deploy irony and a jaundiced eye in the service of dark, but not pitch black, humor. These stories are fun. There are a couple of additional reasons why I am late in covering this very worthy book. For one, it is published by Clash Books (slogan: We put the lit in literary), a small, independent publisher. Even those of us who try to stay on top of books off the beaten path cannot keep track of everything, but they are on my radar now. For two, work like Seibel’s is best read piecemeal, a story or two a day at most. Before reading, take a breath, slow your mind and then give yourself over to the experience entirely for the handful of minutes it takes to read to completion. Let these characters rattle through your head and see if you don’t return with a fresh sense of the world the next day. Book recommendations from the Biblioracle John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read. 1. “The Detective Up Late” by Adrian McKinty 2. “The Doorman” by Chris Pavone 3. “Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Grann 4. “The Demon of Unrest” by Erik Larson 5. “Long Island Compromise” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner — Samuel P., Lincolnwood Samuel is a great candidate for a deeply underappreciated crime writer, Charlie Huston. I’m recommending his novel, “The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death.” 1. “James” by Percival Everett 2. “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney 3. “Purity” by Jonathan Franzen 4. “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt 5. “The Tiger’s Wife” by Téa Obreht — Blair M., Chicago An excellent roundup of contemporary literary fiction published over the last 10 to 15 years. That is why I’m going to go further back, more than 45 years, for Penelope Fitzgerald’s “Offshore.” 1. “The Director” by Daniel Kehlmann 2. “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr 3. “The Rest of Our Lives” by Benjamin Markovits 4. “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk 5. “On the Calculation of Volume (Book II)” by Solvej Balle — Mary M., River Forest Not afraid of some challenge here. Alrighty then, George Saunders’ “Lincoln in the Bardo” it is, then. Get a reading from the Biblioracle Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to [email protected]. John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com. ...read more read less