An unexpectedly raucous and illuminating memoir set in a Southern California public library. For most of us, librarians are the quiet people behind the desk, who, apart from the occasional "shush," vanish into the background. But in Quiet, Please, McSweeney's contributor Scott Douglas puts the quirky caretakers of our literature front and center. With a keen eye for the absurd and a Kesey-esque cast of characters (witness the librarian who is sure Thomas Pynchon is Julia Roberts's latest flame), Douglas takes us where few readers have gone before. Punctuated by his own highly subjective...

A blog started the forever war--a global war set in the not so distant future between two groups (the Rebels and the Coco's).

Dylan Austin has grown up with the war being a constant background to his life; his dad has just returned from war missing a leg; his older sister is missing and presumed dead from the war; and all through school war has been embedded into everything they teach. Teens have been raised on educational war video games, and their minds are polluted with the idea that war is just a game.

Unlike most kids Dylan's age, he does not eagerly await...