The LitBlog Coop announces its spring 2007 Read This! pick today: Alan DeNiro’s debut short story collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. I was the nominator, so I’m thrilled that my colleagues at the LBC found it to be a worthy read. Pleasantly surprised, even.

See, I’m in an MFA program, studying fiction. In one of my classes, each student was instructed to bring in a story that impressed them, and to write up a short paper/presentation on its outstanding qualities. There were two Hemingways, a Tobias Wolff, a John Cheever, a Ring Lardner, a Mary Gaitskill. Many of them were stories that the grad students had been taught in previous classes. I wanted to bring in something new, so I chose the title story from this collection.

They hated it.

I thought that, being in Pittsburgh, my classmates would be charmed by the story’s setting — a futuristic Pittsburgh dystopia. I had thought that they would, like me, find the story funny and smart. That they’d appreciate the craft of it, especially how the story’s end illuminates the beginning; it’s surprising, yet it’s all there, right from the get-go. I had thought they’d notice the language, the love story, the creepy almost-real details like the augmented chickens. But I was wrong.

And I had already nominated the book as a spring pick for the LBC.

When the voting came around, I awaited the inevitable smackdown, the e-mailed cries of “why did you make us read this,” the terrible, horrible anger of these hardworking, hard-reading litbloggers. But the harangues never came. To my surprise, they actually liked it. I felt like one of Mikey’s brothers in that Life commerical.

The LBC will be discussing this book in a few weeks, talking about what they liked (or didn’t) about it. I tentatively suggest that you read it and join in with your own thoughts. You might like it, too.