From Dave Eggers: For this year’s edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading, we wanted to expand the scope of the book to include shorter pieces, and fragments of stories, and transcripts, screenplays, television scripts -- lots of things that we hadn’t included before. Our publisher readily agreed, and so you’ll see that this year’s edition is far more eclectic in form than previous editions. Along the way to making the book, we also came across a variety of things that didn’t fit neatly anywhere, but which we felt should be included, so we conceived the front section, which is a loose Best American roundup of notable words and sentences from 2005. It is, like this book in general, obviously and completely incomplete, but might be interesting nevertheless. "[T]he most grown-up young adult fiction excerpts ever compiled." --Allegra Muzzillo, Black Book DAVE EGGERS  is the editor of McSweeney’s and a cofounder of 826 National, a network of nonprofit writing and tutoring centers for youth, located in seven cities across the United States. He is the author of four books, including What Is the What and How We Are Hungry . INTRODUCTION Late at night, when all sober people are asleep, I’m probably slouching in bed, all Tivo’d out, reading something like The Insanity of Normality, by Arno Gruen. Or a P. G. Wodehouse novel. Or another Isaac Bashevis Singer short story in the three-volume Library of America edition. Or maybe I’m squinting at the latest Acme Novelty Library comic book by Chris Ware. Whatever it is, the next morning I’m another bleary guy with dark circles under his eyes muttering about being late for work in the back of the line at Starbucks. I’m also the guy not dancing at the happening party on Saturday night. Instead, I’ve scuttled over to the corner of the den with my head tilted, running my eyes down each shelf of books, looking for titles I’ve never heard of. Back at home, my dining room table is so stacked with books and magazines and newspapers and scripts and storyboards and comics and mail-order catalogs that I’m forced to tap out this little introduction on my kitchen table, which right now has on it lemme count four books, two daily papers, and the latest issue of the New York Times Book Review. My bathroom has a couple dozen books next to the toilet, and my bedroom is piled so high with books that I fear it’s erotic only to me. Sometimes I think I have a slight problem. Then I remember most of my friends are also readingly obsessed. It’s a struggle for our kind to send flowers on Valentine’s Day instead of a book. We think all librarians are hot. When we read one of those newspaper articles about some mad old coot found dead in his apartment, crushed by thousands of books, we think to ourselves, How romantic. We not only slow down at every used-book store, we slam on the brakes and make illegal U-turns. We haunt those musty old stores so often that sometimes we run into actual copies of books we once owned, and greet them like long-lost pets. A few years back, in a sleazy used-book store in Hollywood, I found one of my favorite books, G. Legman’s demented Rationale of the Dirty Joke, and discovered that the very copy I had grabbed was one I had given as a gift a few years before. I bought the book, crossed out Merry Xmas 1997” in my dedication, wrote in the current year, and gave it to the same ex- girlfriend that Valentine’s Day. My obsessive love of reading began before I could read at all. As a wee tyke I remember being entranced by my older brother Mark’s 1950s-era Little Lulu, Donald Duck, and Mad comic books. You know how much you like looking at those pictures?” Mark asked me. Well, when you can read the words in the balloons, it’s a zillion times funnier.” In the first grade, my eager smile faded when I was handed my preliminary reading book. That first primer had no words in it, just pictures, and kindly Mrs. Hoover sat with us and cruelly went through the whole thing, illustration by illustration, acquainting us with the utterly lame Dick and Jane and baby Sally and dog Spot and kitten Puff. Finally we got our hands on the first real book, and to this day I still get a thrill out of the word Look!” But the real sensation that year was the very first word I learned that actually had some meat to it, a word I had to figure out and puzzle over before unlocking its linguistic secret. The word stumped me at first, because when Mrs. Hoover said to sound it out, I couldn’t figure out exactly what that letter combo was supposed to be. Tuh,” I said. Try again, Matty.” Tuh-huh.” Try again.” Tuh-hee. Tuh-hee.” You’re getting there. Sound it out.” Thuh-huh. Thuh. Thuh?” That’s right! You got it!” Thuh? Thuh? Thuh!” And that’s how I learned to read the word the.” My budding bibliomania was helped along by a family obsessed by books and words. My grandmother called my dad Homer, after the Greek poet, and likewise my uncle Victor Hugo Groening was named after some French dude. M