Yep. Didn't even think of that. Good suggestion (I've never used it myself though). I've used it a few times and it's rather nice. I have to admit (and I can't believe I'm admitting this) that XML Literals in VB make it even nicer.
For about a year and a half, I did my LINQ talk at many events, and I always polled the audience....which would you like to see first, LINQ to SQL, or to XML, or to Objects, or to DataSets? LINQ to XML was almost aways first.
There's a new Paste XML as Type in the WCF Rest Kit, but I haven't tried it yet (for the C# people who like XML Literals)