By Jesse Eisenberg

A couple of nights ago, I was just feeling kind of off, you know? Like, nothing was wrong, but nothing seemed quite right, either. Probably because my days are no longer spent mostly on the beach, napping, and snacking. I couldn’t find anything interesting to me, and I was sort of half-heartedly browsing my regular blogs and one of them linked to a series of fictional essays that actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network or Zombieland, depending on how high or low your brow is; I think you can probably guess which movie I know him from [go see Zombieland—it is awesome!]) has been writing for McSweeney’s.*

Anyway, Eisenberg is enviably as good an author as he is an actor, and the stories, called Restaurant Reviews From a Privileged Nine-Year-Old, both made me laugh and kind of broke my heart, and were just the perfect reading for an hour before bedtime.

*I don’t know what it is about McSweeney’s, but I find it really daunting, so I never just go on and browse. Maybe because it is so beautifully designed or so chock full of very clever writing? Whatever it is, it is clearly too nice a site for me. However, whenever anyone sends me a link to an essay on McSweeney’s, I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll love it.

—Anna