16 of 30- 20 Under 40: Stories From The New Yorker

As the title eludes to 20 Under 40 is a collection of 20 short stories by authors all under 40. I've read a couple of them before so I'm pretty sure at least some of them have been published in the New Yorker. I was pretty excited to read this book when I downloaded it onto my kindle but got distracted with McSweeney's then kind of forgot about it. This along with moving my book collection this weekend really drove home why I did the pinkie swear to begin with as it's disgusting how many books I own that I haven't read. I could probably read for 3 years from just what I own. Anyways back to the review. The authors were all amazingly talented and the stories were diverse. The editor Deborah Treisman did a great job of picking stories & authors rather than shaping the book by picking themes in the stories.

Karen Russell, Tea Obreht & ZZ Packer are authors I've read before and love. I'd read the Russell story before but luckily had forgotten a lot of the details. Tea Obreht is just amazing and her book will most likely be the first I buy when the time comes to expand my collection. ZZ Packer's story was phenomenal and one of my favorites from the collection about a young brother and sister who have recently been freed from slavery and are on a journey to their aunt in New Orleans.

Nicole Krauss & Jonathan Safran Foer I've been wanting to read since reading a review of Nicole's new book in the NY Times. There's something intriguing about the young married couple raising literary fame. I'm curious to see what will be bigger, the story of their marriage or their writing.

Wells Tower is a contributor to McSweeney's who I'm sure I've read but can't remember any specific stories and Joshua Ferris sounds familiar as well. Besides them, I think everyone else was new to me which I enjoyed. On a side not, reading on the Kindle was a little harder with this type of book as I found my self going back to the table of contents a lot. Not a huge deal but I never realized how much I go back to look at the authors or look at a previous story.