I am nearly finished reading The Book of Other People, edited by Zadie Smith.  It’s an interesting collection of short stories by a variety of contemporary and well-known authors, each story a character sketch, a glimpse into someone else’s life.  I’ve mostly enjoyed it, and it’s been a good introduction for me to a few authors I’d heard of but not read.  One such author, Jonathan Lethem, is someone I’ve heard of repeatedly (I think he writes similarly to other authors that I enjoy?  Perhaps he’s been recommended to me?  Perhaps I’ve just seen his name on the bestseller list?), and his story Perkus Tooth is near the end of this collection.  This story and its characters are haunting me, and I will have to pick up one of Jonathan Lethem’s novels soon.  I just read his Wikipedia page to find out more about him, and learned that he lives in Berwick, Maine, just one town over from where I grew up.  Neat!  I love local celebrities even more than national ones.  Sometime I’ll dig up the photo I sneakily had taken with Rob Caldwell at a party.  Possibly the highlight of that year.

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