I’m not sure how David Levithan went so far under my radar for so long. Seriously, I’ve read two books by him (with a third on my shelf) and I’ve seriously enjoyed both and it doesn’t hurt I pronounce his name Leviathan no matter how many times I read it.  As for John Green, the only thing I know about him is that he wrote The Fault In Our Stars which until I finished this novel I’ve had no desire to even look into.
I can’t remember whose blog I saw this on, but I knew I needed to read it when I read the synopsis and I finally got a copy from my local library. It was a quick and hilarious read, even if I didn’t like the lack of capitalization in half the book which is funny as that’s the portion by Levithan. According to Wikipedia, they split the book evenly and it worked perfectly. The juxtaposition of the two styles and stories was perfectly balanced and the final scene had me in tears.
As much as I wanted to, I could not bring myself to like most of the stories in this book. Fitzgerald has a way with turns of phrases and can set a story better than most, but I cannot get over the fact that all he writes about is, money, alcohol, parties and women. There were a couple of stories that stood out: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (the reason I read the collection) and “O Russet Witch!” It is interesting to note that both of these are in the section of short stories Fitzgerald calls ‘Fantasies.’Â The Lees of Happiness was also a good story, but it is under ‘Unclassified Masterpieces,’ and The Jelly-Bean in the ‘My Last Flappers’ portion. Four out of eleven isn’t too bad, but some of them were just odd.