"I first read this in college. I’m really into short story collections and essays, they’re my jam. I talk a lot and I’m very verbose in my writing, but she’s very much the opposite. Sometimes she’ll have a short story that is a page and it’s brilliant, and you’re like, ‘Oh, you can do that, cool.’ A phenomenal book. I usually don’t reread books, but I’ve reread this one."

"Another obvious choice, but I have so much love for DFW. I have always been more drawn to his non-fiction, and this collection of essays is my favorite. The first writing of his that I ever read was the title essay of this collection, and it made me want to be a better journalist. It think DFW is a writer that generally inspires other writers to want to be better."

"Not since The Empathy Exams has a book of essays stuck with me this way. I’ve known Chew-Bose for a decade and she’s always applied the same academic contemplation to her experiences, to her studies of human behavior, and to how it plays out in the films we know and love. She’s now writing profiles for places like Vanity Fair and she turns the genre on its head."