Ask the Dust, Fante. Yes. Another Dan Bern suggestion, and another well-written work. I deferred the Charles Bukowski introduction until I had finished the book, as so many introductions say too much about what follows. If an author wants to spill what’s going on in an introduction to his own work, that’s one thing, but nobody else ought to presume. Turns out Bukowski did a very good job of talking about why he loved Fante without saying anything damagingly revealing about the book itself. Both Fante and Ring Lardner write very well about—well, people—and that so frequently means that there’s an undertone (or sometimes fundamental tone) of despair that reminds me why I can’t read too much Theodore Sturgeon at a time. It also means, sometimes, that my attention span isn’t long enough, so I every so often long for something to happen, already. I will pretend this is the same thing a colleague of mine means when he says he prefers books with a "big idea". Y’know, like Zombies.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Brooks. Yes. The various editing (and, I hope, proofing) problems (some typos, two unrelated occurrences of "a millenia", on ne passé pas for on ne passe pas (again, at least twice)) and occasional lapses into preaching were not enough to discourage me from deeply enjoying this book. I was surprised that Brooks (the son of Mel) was not more hampered by the structure he chose in weaving a coherent and compelling narrative. Some of the jargon struck me as unlikely, but predicting slang is fraught with peril.
I was perplexed to find that the Cataloging-in-Publishing puts the book in "War—Humor": the absurdity of its premise notwithstanding, WWZ is straight drama. Not to say there is no humor—I daresay humor is a vital component of any drama—but the book is not, and does not want to be, a laff riot.

The Best Short Stories of Ring Lardner, Lardner. Yes. On Dan Bern’s recommendation, I gave Mr Lardner a try. His frequent use of heavy dialect (I think it was one of his trademarks) was occasionally distracting and sometimes historically revealing (several not-especially-literate speakers said "w’ile", implying that at least some folks in the early 20th century distinguished between "w" and "wh"). The stories overall were well-written, and by and large held my interest.