After reading all of the fiction stories in the packet, my favorite would have to be "Misdemeanors." This is the perfect example of everyday life. We all take embarrassing stories and try to make them "better" in order to make them less embarrassing. The Old Man clearly didn't enjoy that he was arrested for such a petty crime so instead tries to brag about that face that he did time in prison.
I found "The Letter from Home" to be my most disliked. While I've come to the conclusion that the narrator does in fact die at the end of the story, and the entire story was the last few days flashing before their eyes, I do feel like the real purpose of the story was for the author to show off that she can write a three page sentence free of grammatical errors. To me, that just comes across as a bit egotistical.
I did enjoy "Walking the Baby to the Liquor Store." After two readings, I thought it was just a cute story about a father doing what he can to keep his baby entertained. It wasn't until the third reading in class that the father may be an alcoholic. It was the third paragraph that really got me thinking along this line. "How much work could one possibly do in that brief half hour? And measured against such joy, such pure infant bliss (which may well indeed anticipate a lifetime's happiness), how important is it that I go to work at all? I thought at first he was referring to the child's infant bliss, but instead, perhaps he is referring to his own bliss at drinking. This paragraph also ends with him saying that he will sometimes share a drink as soon as they get home, right there in the kitchen.
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