This year’s installment of THE BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING should really be called THE BEST LIBERAL, DEPRESSING, SELF-IMPORTANT AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING 2005. I can’t quite figure out how this annual series has gone from great fun to a complete wrist-slitter in just three short years of existence. Unless it can gain back its sense of irreverence, I won’t be buying another.

Started in 2002 as a “genre-busting” collection of “fiction, essays, satire, journalism – and much more,” we’re now woefully down to mostly just fiction. And not the good kind, but the woe-is-me, Daddy-beat-me, Mommy-left-me, I’m-fat, nobody-loves-me, everybody-persecutes-me kind of fiction. It’s not that the writers are bad; it’s that their scope is myopic, their tales interchangable.

Out of two dozen contributions (which includes such names as Dan Chaon, Al Franken and Aimee Bender), there are only two worth reading. One is Ryan Boudinot’s “Free Burgers for Life,” which at least is funny and amusing before falling prey to the aforementioned style in its final pages. It’s about a young print shop worker who wins a fast-food contest, and it proves to be the one thing in life on which he can count. After reading it, I’ll never look at a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin the same way again.

The other is a sampling of three cartoons from Joe Sayers. However, these comprise less than two pages and are relegated to the confines of Dave Eggers’ pompous and rambling foreword, which explains they didn’t fit with the book. Why? Because they’re good?

What makes all this so sad is that this series debuted with so much promise. Excerpts from graphic novels. An article about how discarded T-shirts end up in Third World countries. A genuine mix of genres and subjects. Just like 2004’s volume, now the majority of the contents are bleak beyond belief. The fact that they were picked by high school students makes me want to take them by the shoulders, shake them and say, “You’re too damn young to be this jaded already! Life’s too short! Laugh! Have a drink! And for God’s sake, lighten up!”