Fractured Comedy Tales

Patton Oswalt: Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (Scribner; January 2011; ISBN 978-1439149096; cover art by author).

This book was a series of vignettes (and as such, I'm debating whether or not to tag it as several entries in the 2012 Year in Shorts as well). The quality varies: Oswalt lost me during a series of reviews written under a pen name (I would have been happy with one or two reviews), but he reaches Ellisonian heights with one examination of his soul while attending a product giveaway. Somewhere in the middle are entries such as his experiences in his misbegotten youth encountering genre fiction and roleplaying games.

Despite the uneven quality, recommended. Enough so that I'll buy his next book, whenever we see such a volume.