While the postman is generally nice enough to bring me more things to read than I could ever possibly take on, and some of those are items purchased online (the many issues of The Quarterly you've read about here lately, for instance), I do still frequent those things called bookstores on a fairly regular basis too.
I own all of Arthur Phillips' novels. I've read two of them and keep meaning to dig the other two back down off the shelf. Having really enjoyed his last one, I paid close attention to when his new one, The Tragedy of Arthur, was coming out (a little too closely, actually. I was out looking for this last week because I knew he was doing readings in NY, but the release date was really this Tuesday). Perhaps a little meta this time around as the protagonist's name is Arthur Phillips and his family has apparently unearthed a long lost Shakespeare play, "The Tragedy of Arthur."
The other book I picked up was Moondogs by Alexander Yates. Dzanc author, Roy Kesey, brought him by our table at AWP and introduced him to Matt Bell and myself and between his being a nice guy, and Roy's raving about his work (his blurb brings up both Elmore Leonard and Charles Portis, by the way), I found myself scribbling his name, the word Moondogs, and March/April in my AWP notebook. I saw it at the store the other night and picked it up to buy it. Then I opened it up and saw the first line: "A man and a rooster exit a taxi idling on a crowded street." Instead of simply buying it, I ended up sitting down and plowing through the first chapter before getting back up and buying it.
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