Delights and surprises await the reader in this rich gathering of "Shorts" (ranging from several paragraphs to 2, 000 words). From Diane Ackerman's fascination with hummingbirds to Andrei Codrescu's idiosyncratic view of nostalgia to Albert Goldbarth's free-wheeling riff on the universe, each Short becomes a sharply focused lens on an outer world or an inner sensibility.