Feb 11 2010
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Feb 05 2010
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Barnes & Noble: Homeless Bathrooms.
(via Harper Studio)
Jan 28 2010
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“ Start where most of us did: with the iconic covers. Catcher in the Rye, depending on when one found it, featured a brilliant red-orange carousel. It looked to me like an angry book at the time, and of course it is. And his other paperbacks were studies in simplicity. All white, with those rainbow stripes in the corner. They were striking; they stood out from the other cluttered books on the school library shelves, with their illustrations, their boasting. A Salinger book didn’t need to boast, it didn’t need to announce itself. If one were to encounter them now, the comparison would be easy to make: they’re like the Google homepage.
— Our obituary of J.D. Salinger, from the store blog.
Jan 25 2010
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“ The Pages were readers, and Larry fondly remembers vacations to Oregon when they’d take an empty suitcase to fill it with books from the renowned Powell’s Books, in Portland.
— From Ken Auletta’s Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, describing the childhood of Google founder Larry Page. One hopes Page will remember that childhood love of Powell’s when considering terms and strategies for his Google Editions ebook program.
Jan 20 2010
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“ No, I never get laid on tour. But I get songs, and I think that’s better. (I suspect those bad boy male authors would argue otherwise, and to them I say, “Have at it. Who am I to deny a man his Comp Lit undergrads?”) Sometimes I wonder if it would be possible for me to get both, the music and the sex, the complete connection, but it feels like, at least for the moment, probably not.
— Jami Attenberg, on the pleasures (and sorrows) of touring as a female author. An excellent piece.
Jan 19 2010
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New Cooking the Books with Jami Attenberg. We had so much fun, AND we did not get food poisoning. The recipes we used to make cheeseburgers are here and here. Buy Jami’s book here or at your local independent bookstore.
I’ve been waiting for someone to do a cool internet book show. I like that this one also involves food. (Plus, I like Jami Attenberg and Emily Gould, so it’s a big win all around.)
Jan 15 2010
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What Book Were You Born to Read?
For me, it’s David Lodge’s Changing Places. What can I say, I’m a junkie for campus literature.
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Novels and Unicycles: Writing for Attention
“The blog has caused me none of the internal discord my novel has: photos of me aren’t me. Of course, a story is just a story, not me and of course all me, but ultimately it’s an entity so separate that I cannot count anyone’s embrace or rejection of it as anything personal. My novel had become my raison d’être—it was all I was worth and it terrified me to let it into the world. But in the blogosphere, I’m as anonymous as the next sixteen-year-old girl from Minnesota who’s just ripped into her delivery from Topshop and is showing off her new feathered bolero to her three readers, two of whom are probably her real-life friends. My pictures are viewed, judged, passed on, and forgotten. I am published, I am rejected and extolled, and I am still basically unknown. And I love it.”
Jan 14 2010
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“ With the help of Mark Haskell Smith, L.A. Times contributor and author of the forthcoming novel “Baked,” we came up with this list of 10 choice books about marijuana. In alphabetical order:
* “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me” by Richard Farina (novel)
* “Budding Prospects” by T.C. Boyle (novel)
* “Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke” by Dean Kuipers (nonfiction)
* “Cannabis: A History” by Martin Booth (nonfiction)
* “The Drug User: Documents 1840-1960” edited by John Strausbaugh and Donald Blaise (essays and more)
* “The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana” by Jack Herer (nonfiction)
* “The Hasheesh Eater” by Fitz Hugh Ludlow (memoir)
* “Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible” by Jorge Cervantes (nonfiction)
* “Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes” by Terry Southern (essays)
* “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon (novel)
* “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me” by Richard Farina (novel)
* “Budding Prospects” by T.C. Boyle (novel)
* “Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke” by Dean Kuipers (nonfiction)
* “Cannabis: A History” by Martin Booth (nonfiction)
* “The Drug User: Documents 1840-1960” edited by John Strausbaugh and Donald Blaise (essays and more)
* “The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana” by Jack Herer (nonfiction)
* “The Hasheesh Eater” by Fitz Hugh Ludlow (memoir)
* “Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower’s Bible” by Jorge Cervantes (nonfiction)
* “Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes” by Terry Southern (essays)
* “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon (novel)
Jan 13 2010
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An absolutely gorgeous trailer for T.C. Boyle’s The Women directed by Jamieson Fry, the same filmmaker who made Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply trailer.
