Presence of ..... What?

I initially thought I would post on here about being ambivalent to whether we kept The Presence of Others book for next semester or not. After all, the few stories that I have used out of that book I have made extensive notes on and feel like I wouldn't have to worry too much about making a new lesson plan or spending hours preparing for class because I already have done all the leg-work necessary on those stories and feel comfortable using them. But, really, I only use TPOO book for the Critical Analysis paper. I didn't find it too useful for any of the other papers, so I basically just made copies of stories, articles or essays that I found to be more conducive to the way I teach. Last semester I relied on TPOO book for the Memoir, but I have definitely found the Composing Ourselves book to be way more suited for the way I want to teach the Memoir, by letting them experience REAL student Memoirs.

Of course, like any person who hasn't done their homework before they post, I have no suggestions about using a different text for this coming Fall, but I would love to see more of what options there are out there.

Is it too much to ask that, finally, someone would publish a Freshman Composition text that would actually deal specifically with the types of writing we are asking these students to do for us, and also do a little entertaining as well??? There are plenty of articles/essays that might actually work for multiple purposes in TPOO, but they fail to keep my attention at even the most basic level, so why would I expect my students to have some real, in-depth, commentary on said articles/essays???