Charlyne Yi's Short Stories Are Totally Whimsical

This month, get ready to delve into one of the most weird and wonderful books you’ve ever read — because Charlyne Yi has written a short story collection. If you don’t recognize that name straight away, allow me to refresh your memory. Yi is the actress behind Dr. Chi Park from House; she’s also starred in Knocked Up and This Is 40, as well as the faux-documentary Paper Hearts which led to those Michael Cera rumors. And on top of that, Charlyne Yi is a comedian whose performances have ranged from magic, to games, to having her head shaved while singing “Nothing Compares 2 U.”

Short stories are a woefully under-appreciated art form, which is too bad because they’re often a lot more surreal and inventive than longform novels (probably because they can experiment with ideas so bizarre that you could never stretch them out for a full 300 pages). So when someone as ~quirky~ as Charlyne Yi announced her own story collection, Oh the Moon, short story nerds across the world rejoiced.

Yi, who wrote and illustrated all the stories herself, describes them as coming from her “tortured mind”. The stories, whose characters include a woman who is all legs and head, the tiniest boy of all time, and an Elvis impersonator with a bone to pick with the Devil, can certainly be frightening and sad — but at their heart, the stories in Oh the Moon are all about love.

Oh the Moon is available right now, and the stories are every bit as whimsical as we’d hoped. Luckily, we teamed up with HarperCollins to give you look into one of Yi's illustrated short stories:

Clearly your bookshelf needs this book, STAT.

Images: Courtesy of HarperCollins