Around the time I was reading Candyfreak, Steve Almond was rather publicly quitting his job as an adjunct professor at Boston College. So when I saw that he was selling signed copies of his books on his website, I figured, heck, dude could use $15 and so I ordered a copy of My Life in Heavy Metal.

So, it's short stories. Huh. I think I had been a) confusing it in my head with Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City, which is a memoir and b) I think I read a few too many hyper-modern, very abstract, the-house-fell-in-love-with-a-rock-and-they-had-a-baby-who-was-an-Idea short stories a while back, because it's been quite some time since I read a modern lit short story.

Anyhoo, the stories in My Life in Heavy Metal are nothing like those house-rock-Idea ones. They're all very real. Mostly slices of the lives of people in relationships slowly going wrong. Which makes me sad for Steve Almond that he writes so knowingly about them, but happy for me that I could read these well-crafted stories.