You're Not Much Use to Anyone

A funny, pitch-perfect autobiographical novel that reads like The Graduate meets Girls, with a freshness of language and outlook that brings to mind The Catcher in the Rye, by the creator of the popular Tumblr "Pitchfork Review Reviews."David is a freshly minted NYU grad who's working a not-quite-entry-level job, falling in love, and telling his parents he's studying for the LSAT. He starts a Tumblr blog, typing out posts on his BlackBerry under his desk—a blog that becomes wildly popular and brings him to the attention of major media (The New York Times) as well as the White House. But his outward fame doesn't quell his confusion about the world and his direction in it. This semiautobiographical debut is a coming-of-age story perfect for our time. In Sense of Wonder author Gideon Lewis-Kraus's words, "If Tao Lin had been born to Gary Shteyngart's parents and spent his early twenties slaving for pageviews at NewYorker.com, he would have written something like this, the Bright Lights, Big City of the click-here-now generation."