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Poetry. Asian American Studies. Winner of the 2005 December Prize. Reading Tao Lin is like looking the wrong way down Frank O'Hara's ear trumpet at a 21st century Mayakovski IM-ing Lili Brik. This book is fun, smart, manic and ecstatic; it puts on a clean shirt before it loads the gun. "YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM has the energy and oddness of a thing that is rising very fast that is not supposed to be rising, or that is supposed to be rising but for a moment you forget that, and for a moment this ordinary thing looks very strange and exciting"--Deb Olin Unferth. Tao Lin is 23 and lives in New York City. Visit his blog reader-of-depressing-books.blogspot.com.

"Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass — from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious."— Miranda July A startlingly original voice announces itself immediately in this collection of award-winning stories. Tao Lin’s absorbing writing style matches a minimalist prose with a lyric sensibility, poignant compassion with a hysterical sense of humor, bitter reality with enchanting fantasy, and youthful outlandishness with a gentle, mature perceptiveness—all in shaped stories that are a tribute to the form. In a series of pinpoint portrayals, Lin’s tales depict young people in a surreal place between irresponsible youth and workaday adulthood, wanting to reject both cultures in order to craft something different. But such rebellion is harder than ever in a culture dominated by outrageousness, and Lin sensitively portrays the struggle in a way that is highly entertaining, impressively smart, and ultimately moving. It will leave some cheering the war against a dumbed-down culture, others laughing at the tactics, and all concerned feeling like they’ve got a new champion in Tao Lin. Tao Lin , also author of the novel Eeeee Eee Eeee , lives in New York City.

"A revolutionary."- The Stranger "Stimulating and exciting."- The San Francisco Bay Guardian "Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass-from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious."-Miranda July, author of No One Belongs Here More Than You Tao Lin-author of the underground sensation Eeeee Eee Eeee -continues his deadpan existential-slapstick style with poems featuring titles such as: "I will learn to love a person and then I will teach you and then we will know" and "hamsters are heads with little characteristics on the head, part one." It is, in short, a book of poetry in which the author attempts in a calm, sympathetic, and at times sarcastic tone, to explain to himself the possible origins and cures of anger, worry, frustration, obsession, and confusion-while concurrently experiencing those things. Tao Lin is the poetry editor for 3 a.m. magazine , and proprietor of the blog Reader of Depressing Books . His stories and poems have appeared in Mississippi Review , Cincinnati Review , Other Voices , Punk Planet , and many other magazines. Lin, author of the novel Eeeee Eee Eeee and the short story collection Bed , was born in 1983.