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After a series of novels and nonfiction books, I decided to stray into two genres I haven’t touched since college: essay and short story.

I don’t remember how Zadie Smith’s “Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays” was recommended, but I put it on my to-read list months ago with my journalism professor’s voice in my head: A good writer is a good reader. I have been negligent in reading modern essayists, and I hoped by reading Smith I might unconsciously absorb some new writing techniques.

“Changing My Mind” is divided into five sections: Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling and Remembering. Starting with reading was a bad idea since most of the books/authors Smith writes about I have never read. (I have a long way to go on philosophy.) So I skipped the last four essays with the intention of retuning.

I much more enjoyed Smith’s essays on her week in Liberia, the craft of writing, movie reviews, old-time Hollywood actresses and stories of her father. The middle three sections were enjoyable, as Smith is a skilled writer. Though I was not overly enthralled and the essay were not as humorous as the book jacket promised. Her essays were well researched without being preachy, and I must say Smith is much more well-read and informed than I could ever hope to be. I have a feeling we have little in common.

In the end, I didn’t read the final section on author David Foster Wallace - often praised as the best writer of our time. (For as poorly read philosophically as I am, I’m even worse with contemporary artists and have read no more about Foster Wallace than a TIME piece on him.) I did return to the first section since I didn’t think I could say I read the book without reading every single page. But a few pages in on Nabokov or Barthes or someone, I decided I did not have to read every essay. Sue me, but I’m adding “Changing My Mind” to my finished list without full completion. I think it’s part of the essay clause.

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I know exactly how I came across Flannery O’Connor. In 2010, I was at a Luther College writing conference that made constant reference to her work. (O'Connor studied with the Iowa Writer's Workshop.)

O’Connor is a southern writer with a very specific perspective. Her stories are not uplifting. If you’re looking for the happy-ending world of Jane Austen, you won’t find it in O’Connor. You’ll find raw people with raw emotions, humanistic motives and a thread of God under all her work; she was a devout Catholic. Her characters have been called "grotesque" with moral flaws and serial shortcomings.

It was beautiful, it was engaging and it was thought-provoking - three characteristics all short stories in their limited space must aspire to. It was a reminder, too, of the joy of reading a story only 20 pages long; of learning a character, of relating to (or being repulsed by) him or her; of stepping into a world for just a matter of an hour and then stepping out and feeling like the whole story has been told. Nothing missing.

Short stories are something I struggled to write in college. I prefer non-fiction when I tell someone else’s story as it’s presented to me. Short story authors have to create a human, believable place out of nothing and, like any good essayist, have a message to impart. It’s a skill at which I marvel, and with O’Connor read some of the best.