Breaking! Libba Bray picks “Roadrunner” by The Modern Lovers as one of her songs in her turn at Largehearted Boy’s “Book Notes”. This makes us like her even more. Lit. Last night saw Thurston Moore reading Naked Lunch to a packed house at St. Marks Church. Next we find the Sonic Youth leader starting a publishing company. The Desk Set talk about rare book librarians. Yesterday was the 160th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s death. We failed by not […]
Nobel morning: A chronological breakdown of the days first few minutes
7:00 AMish Lev Grossman (via his Twitter) starts it off like this: 7:31 AM The news comes that Herta Mueller wins! Yippee! 7:35 AM I think back to this HTMLGiant post about a group of oddsmakers, and their picks for the prize. I scan for Mueller’s name, and find nothing. I think to myself “somewhere, somebody just hit the jackpot if they bet on her.” 7:37 AM My friend comes on Gchat to complain how the Nobel people are “antisemitic” […]
Two hundred grand will buy you the weirdest night of your life
Just imagine, you could eat a dinner “scheduled at your convenience on a Monday between February and June 2010, in Manhattan” with Malcolm Gladwell, the priest from Footloose, and that blessed lady who wrote all those romantic comedies we aren’t ashamed to admit we love. The whole shebang will only set you back $200,000 dollars. And listen, we won’t fault you if you got the cash, it’s totally fine. Just make sure you include the stipulation that the freakshow needs […]
My favorite Yelp review of a bookstore
By Jason Diamond Tobias Carroll is going to Chicago. Being from there, and liking Mr. Carroll as much as I do, I tried my hardest to direct him to the finest booksellers in the city: Myopic, Quimbys, Armadillo’s Pillow, plus others in the north. Also mentioning the south, and the stores in and around Hyde Park*. Since my (terrible) internal GPS only really works in and around the Northside, I had to use old, reliable Google to get addresses, and […]
Bites: Don Amazon, young adult steampunk, 2666 gets the paperback treatment, Johnnie Walker kicks Glenn Beck to the curb, 3rd Ward home cookin’, and more
“Amazon’s a modern day Don Quixote.” (Thanks Gawker) Lit. So now book bloggers have to report the books they get for review or face an $11,000 fine. Ed Champion ain’t gonna stand for it! Is the term”young adult steampunk” at all related to The Pains of Being Heart song “Young Adult Friction”? (Thanks Boing Boing) HTML Giant really likes writer Sarah Manguso A little book named 2666 is now in paperback. Lit Kicks does an eloquent job of summing […]
Your Parents Were Awesome
The tumblr My Parents Were Awesome reminds me of that Don McLean song which my (fairly dorky) parents used to chant to us kids when frustrations arose.
Bookstore Cat of the Week: Champ
This might get me pigeonholed as the “weird dude who likes cats too much,” but I really like store cats. So much so that I have found myself going into stores that I’m not necessarily that fond of simply to pet their cats. With that in mind, since it is Monday morning, I feel it my duty to bring a little bit of joy to the world and introduce the Store Cat of the Week. This is Champ. He lives […]
“Why am I hanging around in the rain”
Since The Rumpus was nice enough to provide us this song, we decided to give you another slice of pop perfection.