Tuesday, September 07, 2004

XX marks the spot

Ah, now that I'm no longer working at a bookstore, I can once again share the joy of browsing the shelves and the new fiction tables.

And if I only had an income, I'd have a pair of books by the McSweeney's women under my arm--And Now You Can Go by Vendela Vida and The Effect of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavits, each just out in paperback. Julavits and Vida co-edit the McSweeney's monthly The Believer (Vida is married to Dave Eggers), and their novels received mostly strong reviews when they came out in hardcover a year ago. (Although, admittedly, I waited for the paperbacks.)

Vida's novel shared some publicity with her friend Julie Orringer's debut collection of stories, How To Breathe Underwater, and if Vida's novel is half as good as Orringer's stories, it'll be well worth picking up the paperback. (I haven't seen any information on a paperback release for How To Breathe Underwater, but it's fabulous, and more than justifies the cost of a hardcover.)

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