Too many book lovers fall into a cycle of buying books and stacking them in piles without ever quite getting around to reading them. The Japanese even have a word for it, tsundoku. Fear not, dear reader! Michael Riedell’s Small Talk & Long Silences can help break that habit because you can easily complete the whole volume in single sitting. Categorize these poems however you like-scribbles, ditties, doohickeys, quips, quotes, rants, jokes, verses, curses, aphorisms, witticisms, tidbits, epigrams, quick rhymes, meaningless lines, semi-serious tanka and haiku, or just plain buffoonery-they all share one obvious feature: they are damn short. This is a book of literary bonbons, sweet and done before you know it. Or, for those less inclined to poetry, think of them as easy pills to swallow. They go down fast as a shooting star.