Alina Simone is friends with Amanda Palmer. Like a million other people, I follow Amanda Palmer on twitter. When she tweeted about her friend Alina's new book trailer I was curious - mostly because she made a joke about how the trailer showed her back when she had eyebrows. (If you are a fan you will (1) understand this and (2) not be grossed out by it.) The trailer is really wonderful though - one of those instances where the author blended her book perfectly with the medium. She also had a unique story to tell about her friend Amanda and how twelve years ago she set out to be famous and Alina set out to make a movie. Only one of them, she notes, was successful.

And those two lines in the middle of some crazy visuals and lovely music make me think this is somebody who has something to say that I"m interested in reading.

So I ordered the book (from Powells, of course) and I started reading it over the weekend and it is really really good. I tweeted yesterday that Alina's book is the essay collection that everyone said Sloane Crosley had written. These are the funny, wry adventures of the single girl making her way in the city. This is the story of a twenty-something who wanted to do something creative and fun and struggled to find her way to accomplish that. (The book is not at all about Amanda Palmer but rather how to become a singer/songwriter and get a band and get records made and not completely kill your parents who really wish you did something with math like everyone else in your family.) It's smart writing - whip smart writing - and thus far absolutely none of it is fake or forced or written as if I'm supposed to like it and would if only I was hip enough. (I'll be honest, with all those high powered blurbs and gushing reviews I felt a bit like I was in the "Emperor Who Wore No Clothes" when I read Crosley's first book. Was I the only one who didn't like it? It felt like it for awhile there.)

I will have more on You Must Go Win later this month but right now, I'm loving it and that is all you need to know!