by James Hoby

A large box is thrown from a passing van into a yard. Inside the box, the unlucky homeowner finds various worthless items packed with a tremendous amount of shredded paper. Curious and angry, he hires two local teenagers to scan the shreds into his computer, and he uses the computer to reassemble the documents.

For the most part, the documents focus on John and Helen Hooper, their daughter Jenny, and Helen's Aunt Trudy. There are letters, lists, school essays, memoranda, greeting cards, e-mails, newspaper clippings, pages torn from books, and other documents. Out of spite, the homeowner decides to collect and publish some of the documents, as A Year with the Hoopers.