After a long posting hiatus which I like to refer to as “Graduating” we are now back in action, possibly even with new posters. Possibly even back on our every other day quasi-schedule.

I was first introduced to Julie Orringer through the compiled Best American Non-Required Reading (I believe it was 2004), and her short story “The Smoothest Way is Full of Stones”, also published as an honorable mention in the Pushcart Prizes 2005. That story along with several other long-short stories is published here in her first collection. She is now working on a novel.

I enjoyed this collection, it is a pretty fast read but full of interesting stories mostly centered around young and adolescent people growing up, and coming into their own worlds. I specifically recommend “When She is Old and I am Famous” and “The Isabel Fish”. Go forth, read, and enjoy summer, the best time of all to catch up on the seventy-two books you were supposed to read this year which you are clearly behind on.