On the second day of our weeklong roadtrip in Mali, I read all of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (which E had already read) and E read all of Life of Pi (which I had already read). Then we realized that for the next six days, all we had between us was a weatherbeaten old copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany (which we both had already read once). We took turns, each marking our respective place, until we got back to the Grande Hotel in Bamako, and could once again read day-old International Herald-Tribunes scavenged from the Air France flights and sold on the street at full price, or lose ourselves in hours of CNN and French action shows and Julia Roberts movies on the TV.

I haven't had time for books since I got back (poor Owen Meany sat neglected on the nightstand, then got packed in a cardboard box), so the double-thick New Yorker Début Fiction issue arrived just in time. I liked Lara Vapnyar's Love Lessons best. There are vivid and poignant scenes in Heather Clay's Original Beauty, but I'm not sure how well the whole thing hangs together. There's a third debut story I haven't read, City of Clowns, as well as stories from some veterans: David Sedaris gets off his one-trick pony (a very funny pony, but still) and delivers a solid new story, Our Perfect Summer. Jhumpa Lahiri packs a lot of years into the bittersweet "Gogol" (not online).

There's also an excellent poem by Spencer Reese, The Clerk's Tale. (Online only: interview with Spencer Reese.)