The other day, I purchased the buzzed-about new book The Underminer, by Mike Albo with Virginia Heffernan. I knew I'd like it because I loved the excerpt in The New Yorker (so much that I'd already asked Mike Albo to read at next Wednesday's Ritalin Reading), but I didn't know that I'd read the entire book in one sitting and that I'd think, upon finishing, that it could easily have been packaged as a work of serious (well, serious humor) fiction. The idea behind it seems like it could have ended up being one-note, but I found that there are so many careful details that it's a really well-rounded fully-realized novel. I absolutely love it and can't recommend it enough.
(By the way, I feel like I should get credit for not doing an Underminer impression in this post. It was really, really hard.)
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