Friday, June 06, 2008
Truly, life gets more amazing every day. Cecily von Ziegesar, author of the Gossip Girl YA book series that was then adapted into the BSE, is working on her first adult series, according to Hyperion. Due out in 2009, the series
(first book is called "Cum Laude" -- really??????) will be about a
group of young adults who meet during their freshman year at a small
college in MAINE. (Via.) [Cross-posted on About Town/Word Up.] --- Deirdre Fulton
6/6/2008 10:12:00 AM by Sharon | |
Thursday, June 05, 2008
In 2000, David Foster Wallace wrote this piece for Rolling Stone, about his seven days traveling with the then-insurgent John McCain campaign. The story, published in full as part of DFW's 2005 Consider the Lobster, offers an incomprable look inside the insanity that is a modern political campaign -- packaged in true DFW style, which means it is funny and intricately detailed and spot-on, analysis-wise. Eight years later, McCain is the subject of intense scrutiny once again. But this time, he's no insurgent -- he's the establishment candidate. In this context, Back Bay Books is publishing DFW's McCain essay in its third incarnation -- as a stand-alone book called McCain's Promise, with an intro by Slate.com writer Jacob Weisberg. Now, in addition to providing still-fascinating inside-scoop details, the piece stands to illuminate the ways in which McCain, his campaign, and his Straight Talk Express have morphed over the years. In this Wall Street Journal interview, DFW talks about some of those changes: "McCain himself has obviously changed; his flipperoos and weaselings on
Roe v. Wade, campaign finance, the toxicity of lobbyists, Iraq
timetables, etc. are just some of what make him a less interesting,
more depressing political figure now—for me, at least. It's all
understandable, of course—he's the GOP nominee now, not an insurgent
maverick. Understandable, but depressing. As part of the essay talks
about, there's an enormous difference between running an insurgent
Hail-Mary-type longshot campaign and being a viable candidate (it was
right around New Hampshire in 2000 that McCain began to change from the
former to the latter), and there are some deep, really rather troubling
questions about whether serious honor and candor and principle remain
possible for someone who wants to really maybe win. I wouldn't take
back anything that got said in that essay, but I'd want a reader to
keep the time and context very much in mind on every page."
(Thanks to Chris Gray for the WSJ heads up!) -- Deirdre Fulton
6/5/2008 10:01:00 AM by Sharon | |
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
I finally
got around to reading my May email update from Goodreads.com, one of several
social networking sites for book nerds like me. (I use it primarily to keep
track of my own current reading habits / progress; I’m less interested in
reading/writing reviews.) Since I joined about a year ago, the site has
continuously improved; recent updates include the ability to purchase books
directly from your “To-Read” list, and an addictive, reader-formulated book
quiz.
Also fun to
see is the list of “Movers and Shakers” -- that month’s most popular books.
May’s top five are: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
by Barbara Kingsolver (read
it, loved it); Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (sci-fi YA about a
society where everyone gets prettifying plastic surgery at age 16 -- sounds
good); a twofer of Tweak by Nic Scheff and Beautiful Boy by David Scheff (a boy’s tale of
crystal meth addiction and his father’s story of dealing with it); The Book
Thief by Marcus Zusak (heard great things about this book, started it,
couldn’t get into it, didn’t finish it); and The
Road by Cormac McCarthy (definitely on my to-read list, and currently being made into a movie).
You can be
my book-friend here: http://www.goodreads.com/profile/dfulton. -- Deirdre Fulton
6/3/2008 2:38:00 PM by Sharon | |
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
4/15/2008 1:33:59 PM by Sharon | |
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Okay!! Our editor sent us this link to Polyvore a couple of weeks ago, and we were all, oh, cool, it's like Cher's computer in Clueless. And then we promptly forgot about it. But the delightful T.Y. at the Lit Connection was inspired, and she created two book-themed character collages which we're totally envious of. The first is inspired by the prom scene in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, the second, which is our favorite, is inspired by The Witch from Blackbird Pond! Go look at them, NOW! She also made one for a young Ernest Hemmingway and Sixteen Candles! And here is our collage, which we made in tribute to Jane Austen's first novel, Sense & Sensibility, which we are reading right now. We spoiled the plot for ourselves by watching the Masterpiece Theatre program last weekend. The 2-part series made us weep, and the book just breaks our heart over and over and over again! Elinor and Marianne! Painting and pianofortes! Tea in a country cottage! Suffering and emotional breakdowns! Hurrah! We are totally asking for it! We can't remember the last time we read a happy book. Without further ado:
4/10/2008 11:08:48 AM by Sharon | |
Thursday, March 27, 2008
 Keith Gessen: Author, broad-shouldered man. The Observer is really doing some excellent shoe-leather reporting on sub-cultures these days. Last week's awkward musing on Urbane Tomboys flummoxed us (aren't these girls just hipsters who wear boy clothes, and what does this have to do with feminism?) but Doree Shafrir's story on Nerds of Steel this week is a little bit more our thing. Hipsters or Ripsters? Buff, and Proud? Oh, yes, of course, of course. The publishing industry's collective boner for hottie authors doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So it makes sense that examples of current "nerdy beefcake poster boys" include a lot of literary lads: Conan O'Brien, Keith Gessen ( N+1 editor and author of everyone's favorite new galley, All The Sad Young Literary Men), and up-and-coming buff dork Benjamin Nugent. Nugent penned a book called American Nerd: The Story of My People, which will come out in May. We. Must. Read. This. Shafrir's piece was a fun romp, but we're a bit disappointed that there wasn't some kind of sidebar thing on female buff nerds. She glosses over it by noting that "female nerds can be 'buff,' but that makes for a sexy librarian/Tina Fey kind of paradigm." Radar has some ideas for the new tribes the Observer should hunt down, but we think their next feature should focus on a group we're going to go ahead and call Book Tramps. More specifically: Slutty Ass Bitch Whores Who Read. We are very interested in this phenomenon, given the number of prostitutes with double-lives out there.
3/27/2008 12:14:15 PM by Sharon | |
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
 Zadie Smith: "Put it in a drawer."One of PopSerious's correspondents was at a lecture at Columbia University yesterday, where writer Zadie Smith ( White Teeth) gave a lecture on "Feeling Fraudelent." Below, some wise words by the author. We love this kind of thing. So far, the best advice about writing we ever got was "Sometimes you just have to puke over the side and keep rowing." This is close competition: On the subject of finishing a novel (or for those writers out there squeamish about the N-word, “a piece”), Smith said you should “step away from the vehicle.” Put it in a drawer. Do not publish it–-do not even read it–-until you absolutely have to. The most important reader of your work is not yourself who has written it, or an editor who has seen ten drafts of it already, but a complete stranger, and if you can keep the thing in a drawer long enough chances are that you’ll become that stranger yourself.
3/26/2008 1:54:51 PM by Sharon | |
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
 © Rachel McPhersonYou know how sometimes, someone says something that makes your face hot and your hands ball into fists of fury and your face go into perma-scowl only to realize you have let them get away with it? We do! Oh, we do, we do, WE DO! We have been there again and again, only to lie awake at night thinking of The Brilliant Things We Ought To Have Said. It can be difficult, and sometimes impossible, to snark back. We are rather shy, and these things don't always come easily to us. Our personalities are “confrontationally-challenged,” shall we say, which seems to be a quirk shared by many biliophiles! We’re likely the sort alpha-individuals refer to, smirkingly, as a "meak-voiced door-mat.” Yes, someone said this to us once. It was awful! Our insides were quaking, and yet we were unable to properly defend ourselves! But it doesn’t have to be that way. Help has arrived, friends, and we are delighted to share the news. In this week's fishwrap, we wrote about Lady Arabella Snark's (a/k/a A.C Kemp -- writer, slang expert, and MIT lecturer) The Perfect Insult for Every Occasion. Basically, the book is our NEW BIBLE, and that's not something we admit to lightly. Particularly when our Jewish mom is maybe reading this. Kemp is extremely funny and clever, and we wished we could tell you more about her book in our little write-up. Fortunately, the Interweb has no space constraints. The Perfect Insult functions as an anti-ettiquite guide, ready to teach you about properly wounding, unconventional put-downs geared toward everyone from passive-agressive fucktards to your douchey co-worker. Also: mean boys, cruel family members, and snobs! There are quizzes and enlightening MENSA-level vocabulary lessons woven through the text. What’s an orchidectimy, you ask? “It sounds like a flower,” Kemp told us. “Or something that would be really nice. Except it’s removing your testes.” The Perfect Insult is written from the perspective of Lady Snark, a character Kemp created for fun. What a card! What a kick! We heart Miss Snark. And you will, too, if you make the time to see her in her full glory -- engraved flask, elbow-length satin gloves, superior smile and all -- tomorrow at the BU Barnes & Noble (660 Beacon St) at 7 pm. Go! But first, read our interview outtakes with Kemp, in which she discusses her insult collection, the book's upcoming YouTube tie-in, and fake socialites. How did you come to write the book?It was kind of an organic thing, I guess. I had taught this slang class to international students and I wanted to write a book for international students on slang. I went to a bunch of publishers and none of them were interested in it. Around the same time I started Slang City, and it was really astonishing to me that most of the people who came to this web site were not international students but native speakers. Then I thought, oh, well I’ll do a book that’s connected to that. I decided on insults. But then, somehow, between the time that I came up with the idea and finishing writing the book it turned into something else. Part of it was that I had written in it in this sort of arch, ironic tone and when my agent took me on he said, Well, why don’t you try assigning an actual character to that voice? And I thought, "Oh, a socialite would be good!" I didn’t know anything about socialites so I read a bunch of books about them. And was that when it morphed into an anti-ettiquite guide?
Once I started writing it in that voice, it kind of changed the
direction. Originally it was just going to be a book about insults and
different categories of insults. When I decided to do it that way, it
became more of an anti-ettiquite kind of book. I ended up putting other
things in, like, you know, information about exotic poisons. Did you have a running collection of insults to cull from?A lot of the stuff in the book I had to spend a great deal of time thinking about. The book has a lot of obscure words -- those, I just sort of collected. I hadn’t originally intended to include so many arcane words. But at some point in the early stages of the book I was reading The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. It’s about Edgar Allen Poe and it’s one of those historically based books -- he wrote The Dante Club. So, he had all this vocabulary in there that was sort of the 19th century stuff that nobody uses anymore. And so I started just writing these things down on the backs of envelopes. Every time I would find something funny in a newspaper article or book, I would just write it on the back of an envelope until I had a very large collection of envelopes! Then I just started putting them into the book. Sometimes I would look for something that I had found somewhere else and though, that’s an unusual word. And then I’d go onto the online Oxford English Dictionary and I would find something else by mistake when I was looking for that. Which section of the book is most dear to Miss Snark?Well, I think the quiz in which you have to differentiate between grammar terms and sexual perversion and rocks and people from the Bible. That was one of my favorite parts. But the other part that I really liked is the letter on refusing invitations. Last week a bunch of my friends got together and one of my coworkers from MIT shot a video acting that out. I’m going through all of the shots but I’m hoping that in the next couple of weeks we’ll be putting that on YouTube. I was a little nervous to do it and have my friends do it, who were not professional actors, but they were amazing. Are you planning on dressing up as your nom de plume for author events?Yes, absolutely. This afternoon one of the tasks on my list is to order an engraved gin flask! She’s one of these people -- and this was something, when I was reading these various socalite books, there were these various real-life characters who had been from this poor background and married someone who was better than them, divorced them, married someone who was better than that, and kept moving themselves up the ladder. Actually, I don’t know if you noticed this but the dedication in the book is to this woman named Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrborn. She was one of the characters that I found, but it was like a one line mention in a book about New York socialites. I looked it up and she was this woman who was a dressmaker, but she called herself a Baroness. She took a couple of her friends and moved to the Galapogos Islands and called herself the Empress of the Galapogos Islands. She would do things like steal her neighbor’s mail, and then charge them for it! When you look at the current socalites -- Paris Hilton? It’s like, that’s not what a socalite is supposed to be!
3/12/2008 5:01:16 PM by Sharon | |
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
 Sloane Crosley: The new Dorothy Parker, some say -- or just our new Imaginary FriendKelefa Sanneh, our favorite New York Times pop music critic, is going to be a staff writer at The New Yorker! Now he and the S.F.J. can totally duke it out over the Lil' Mama and Britney coverage. Loving it! Also moving to 4 Times Square is New York magazine writer Ariel Levy, of whose work we are also big fans. Margaret B. Jones's (not her real name!) Love and Consequences, a memoir about coming-of-age as a penniless, abused foster child in the L.A. gang the Bloods was -- wait for it -- a big, fat lie. Girl got Michiko Kakutani creaming over her writing last week, and she's a stone-faced bullshit artist. Oh, the many ways in which she could have handled this differently. Peggy, did you ever think about writing a non-fiction book based on your friends' accounts, instead of, we don't know, passing them off as your own?! Remember when we freaked out over that Sloane Crosley profile in the NY Observer? The Most Popular Publicist in the World is back, and her new book is about to come out. The hype machine is nearly short-circuiting itself over her tome? You don't say! We're still really, really excited to read it, though. This is the first personal essay Sloane published, in the Village Voice, and it's very funny and good, so we guess the blurbers are all right. We like her. We can't help it. Please let her survive this ugly process of the build-up and the backlash.
3/4/2008 11:02:07 AM by Sharon | |
Monday, March 03, 2008
Er, more specifically, JANET MALCOLM has reviewed Gossip Girl, and we're talking about the book series by Cecily von Ziegesar, not the television series by Josh Scwhartz. Oh, we are completely losing our shit over this review. It is three pages long online, although we would be so happy if it were longer, and that Malcolm did succumb against her own will and "go on telling Blair stories until they are gone..." The piece is so full of delicious bits we're pretty much at a loss. We would cut and paste the entire thing here just to satisfy our need to have it preserved somehow, but instead we elected to simply link to it and cut out the clip from our print copy and file it away in our file folder of amazing stuff. But just because we really can't help ourselves: Von Ziegesar uses the technique of narration through interior voice with all her major characters, but when she gets into the id-shaped mind of Blair Waldorf she crosses a kind of boundary. Blair is both a broader caricature and a more real person than the others. Her over-the-top selfishness and hatefulness has the ring of behind-our-masks-we’re-all-like-that truth. And among her malevolent internal mutterings lurk some of the series’ funniest lines. When her mother marries Cyrus Rose, for example, and proposes that Blair reconsider her refusal to take his name, Blair’s inner voice growls back: “Blair Rose? No thank you. It sounded like the name of a perfume made especially for Kmart.”
Even though the books are about a hundred years old in terms of newsiness and timeliness, it really doesn't matter because of how elegantly Malcolm dissects them here. We wish we were her, pretty much.
3/3/2008 1:02:16 PM by Sharon | |
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
It's deal day for Publisher's Lunch Weekly. Fresh out of the inbox: General/Other Marisha Pessl's NIGHT FILM, a psychological thriller about obsession, family loyalty and ambition set in raw contemporary Manhattan, moving to Kate Medina at Random House, by her new agent Amanda Urban at ICM.
Uh, so was that a nice deal? A very nice deal? A good deal? A significant deal? OR A MAJOR DEAL (a/k/a here's a check for half a million dollars, you win the author lotto again!) Inquiring minds are inquiring, and obviously, we wish we knew. While Word Up has been slightly divided and somewhat confused by the way Pessl and her publisher have handled her author publicity, we personally are enormous fans of her work. Special Topics in Calamity Physics was our favorite novel of 2006, after all. Speaking of, you know who should totally play Blue in the movie version? AMBER TAMBLYN. We only just had this revelation of sorts.
2/27/2008 11:52:11 AM by Sharon | |
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Hell to the yes. "Fine Lines," the newish Friday feature at ultimate lady-blog Jezebel just keeps getting more and more delish. The past fortnight showcased two of our especial YA favorites: The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger and Elizabeth George Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Read them both, then come back to us, if you choose. YA-Rant Alert! We own almost every single Danziger book. We bought most of them used at garage sales or from that Scholastic book-buying catalog thing they always had once a month at our school (which furnished most of our youthful library! when the books came it was like nerd holiday and birthday all in one!). Cat is probably our pet Danzinger tale, mostly because it's written about an outcast from the perspective of said outcast, it never gets overly precious, it's raw and honest and lonely and real, and shit, Marcy is a total card! What a hidden firecracker! So yes, we adored her in Cat, but then suddenly we found ourselves SERIOUSLY DISAPPOINTED in Danziger for turning Marcy's whole life story around in an unpleasantly cliched manner. The sequel novel about our girl, There's a Bat in Bunk Five, catches us up to Marcy about a year later: she's lost a ton of weight, is suddenly pretty (no more awkward adolescence at 15? how nice for her!), and scores one of the cutest, wittiest, guitar-playing dudes at the artsy fartsy camp Ms. Finney and her hot, bearded husband run instead of teaching English to ungrateful public school kids. Phew. It's like -- what gives? One of the things that was so wonderful about Cat is that at the end, everything doesn't turn out to be 100%! And that's cool! Because newsflash! Not every social wallflower BLOSSOMS LIKE A LOVELY DELICATE FLOWER in two seconds after their phsycial appearance changes for the better. Duh! It's just upsetting. We felt as though something was STOLEN FROM OUR HEARTS after we read Bat. The worst part? Yes, we were jealous of Marcy! When we were supposed to be relating to her! What happened?! On the other hand, The Witch of Blackbird Pond always satisfied and freaked us out to the nines every time we read and read and reread it in middle school. So delicious! Such a perfect teen precursor to our beloved Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, the sort of haunting romantical coming-of-age mystery creep-fest that makes life worth living! Kit, dear, headstrong Kit, is flawed -- and yet -- she's all fierceness and fabulosity. Old Hag has her totally figured out: she screws up, but we can't help but love her to pieces by the end. Plus, the Purtians! Connecticut colonial wilderness! Crippled Mercy and her big blue eyes! Boys in breeches! Sharp-tongued Nat! CONSIDERING the idea of marrying simply to get out of doing back-breaking housework! Oh, god. Where, oh where, is that Scholastic book catalog when we need it? Or a used bookstore? Or a library? We want tea and old books, now, forever, yesterday.
2/26/2008 4:02:48 PM by Sharon | |
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
In this week's fishwrap we chatted with Mortified creator David Nadelberg about social wallflowers, accidental art, and his new romance-themed anthology. It's 275 pages filled with brutally humiliating tales of love and lust and youth. We cannot be the only people who live for this sort of thing. Tomorrow night, we beg of you: go see the Mortified Boston stage show at 8 pm at the Paradise Lounge, followed by a book-signing of Mortified: Love is a Battlefield with Nadelberg himself. It's $12. And Freeks & Geeks creator/champion of the unpopular kids in high school Paul Feig hearts the entire venture, so, you know, it's not just us. How awesome is that cover? We love this person, whoever they are. Share the shame, and in the meantime, watch the Mortified Showbox Show's latest web-isode, "Everyone's a Critic." (You may remember Will as the guy you wanted to be best friends with after listening to that This American Life episode, "Parental Guidance Suggested," in which he read letters that he wrote to his Grandma because he didn't have friends, OMG.) Our heart. It breaks. Continually.
2/5/2008 11:13:05 AM by Sharon | |
Friday, February 01, 2008
Okay, we feel badly for calling out Jezebel about the whole bitter thing -- it's not all the time! it's just about certain stuff! and we understand how they feel because excessive shallowness is annoying! -- but anyway, we are kissing their collective bums over this Friday Fine Lines feature that they've been running for the past while. We've been meaning to tell you about it but neglected to because we have a lot of trouble concentrating on Fridays. So each week, Lizzie Skurnick reviews and discusses the YA books beloved to most girls in their youth. It's the-next-to-most-delicious-thing other than actually sitting down and rereading them. Today's feature is about the brilliant Katherine Patterson's Jacob Have I Loved, which we totally forgot after our recent revived obsession with Judy Blume yet is absolutely one of our favorite, favorite, FAVORITE YA's of all time. How amazing is that cover. We can't even talk about it. LOUISE WAS TOTALLY THE PRETTIER SISTER. We really want to stop off at the BPL, hustle up to the kid's section, borrow it, take it home, and cry about it all weekend. Our heart breaks.
2/1/2008 5:11:37 PM by Sharon | |
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Oh, we love oddly theme magazine issues. MediaBistro's GalleyCat alerted us to the fact that the literary magazine Barrelhouse is seeking your best roller derby writing for an upcoming issue. Some details to bear in mind: Barrelhouse wants: "Fiction, essays, poems, whatever you got. Barrelhouse will select one winner who will receive original art created by Cory Oberndorfer, a genuine roller derby artist. Finalists will be published in our Very Special Roller Derby Section, which will be included in our next print issue."Barrelhouse will give: "The one we like best (aka, "The Winner") will recieve original artwork from Cory Oberndorfer, who creates (among other things) roller derby related art. Cory's piece will take it's inspiration from your work. This essentially means that you will become immortalized in two formats: your roller derby writing will appear in the pages of Barrelhouse, and will also be celebrated in or serve as inspiration for Cory's work. Which will also be the cover of the next issue of Barrelhouse. So essentially we're offering to make you a stone cold Mona Lisa style roller derby literary god or goddess whose roller derby writing will live on for all eternity. Other stuff that we like will appear in the Very Special Roller Derby Section, thus making it's authors a form of lower deities."Barrelhouse asks: That your submission be spanking-new! "Sorry, no previously published work" will be accepted. Go here for more submission info and further details. Literary Derby Dames, take note!
1/29/2008 4:09:10 PM by Sharon | |
Thursday, January 10, 2008
 Courtesy of The New YorkerAn interesting little literary roundtable of sorts happened in our corner of the Phoenix HQ today. We were discussing our fondness for a story in The New Yorker's winter fiction issue by Anne Enright, called " Natalie." Nina MacLaughlin (the other half of Word Up) and our colleague Adam Reilly, however, had recently read Enright's 2007 Booker Prize winning The Gathering. Despite both admitting that they sped through the book -- Adam even said he stayed up late nights finishing it -- each came away disappointed, and somewhat unsatisfied. The reason we liked "Natalie" so very much was because we were entranced by how the narrator discovered things about herself through her bad-to-worse, awkwardly forced relationship with the title character. Often, we think, people like Natalie can bring about certain revelations about the type of individual you are, and the type of individual you can never be. There is an inherent beauty and free-fall in that discovery, and that is what the story meant to us. Plus, the photo (see above) that The New Yorker chose to accompany the piece was utterly perfect. For us, it evokes the same feelings the story does: loss, desolation, exhilaration, fear, lust, the world at your feet with nothing and everything to lose. We are about to approach The Gathering, then, with all of these thoughts in mind, but we wondered whether Anne Enright was as polarizing to anyone else's little world as it was to ours. Tell us, if you like.
1/10/2008 5:53:52 PM by Sharon | |
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Photo by Masayuki Yoshinaga We were broken for a little while, but we're back, and happy to be here! So here's the thing. We wrote about this book, Gothic + Lolita, a little while ago, but we're still kind of obsessed with it. It sits on our desk and we stare at the pictures when we're supposed to be writing about other things. Phaidon puts out the coolest shit, don't they? Click here for Radar's lengthy and fantastical excerpt.
1/9/2008 5:12:38 PM by Sharon | |
Friday, November 30, 2007
Image via the NY Observer
Oh, GOD. Oh god oh god oh god. I have so many conflicting thoughts and emotions swirling over Leon Nefakh's latest 3-page New York Observer profile. It's about Sloane Crosley, a 29-year-old Vintage book publicist who had a collection of personal essays published this past April. First of all, she really does seem geniune and loveable. And yes, I would like to be her friend. But there are secrets beneath the surface:
“She’s a pretty damn genuine person,” said Curbed’s Lockhart Steele, who was a longtime managing editor of Gawker. “[Sloane is unique in this way] especially among media people. You deal with so much bullshit from people and so much bullshit from publicists trying to tell you this is great or this is the next great American novelist.” Ms. Crosley, by comparison, cuts to the chase with editors and writers, and conscientiously tailors her pitches to suit their tastes. In other words, where publicists of all kinds—for movies, books, socialites and dentists—have created a giant wall of noise, Ms. Crosley manages to be heard above the racket, recommending her writers and titles to others with a gentle caress instead of a swift kick.
The first thing I did when I read this was forward it around to some book publicist girls I know, and this is what one of them wrote back: "I felt awful and small and like my hair wasn’t shiny enough." It's true. NOBODY's hair is naturally that shiny! Sloane, what product do you use? Please share. And look up there at her skinny jeans and boots! It makes my heart weep.
But more importantly...
How? In what way? Does she gently caress? Instead of kick? The editors and newspaper people? Who hate being harrassed by publicists? And how? Is she so confident? And How Is It Possible To Not Be Nervous when you're hanging out with Candace Bushnell, and, um, Paula Froelich? As a former book publicist who was kept awake at night wondering whether the hundreds upon hundreds of book editors I called and emailed routinely about my authors would ever get back to me, I am officially obsessed with her life and am desperate to know more. She's like... the Cory Kennedy of literary publicity! Maybe? What do her pitch letters look like? Do they contain magical spells? Is there anyone out there who can forward me one? Tell me everything and more.
11/30/2007 2:44:34 PM by Sharon | |
Friday, November 16, 2007
From the inbox:
Tribute to poet Anne Sexton
Sunday, November 18th at 2 pm
 Don't miss our 5th annual celebration of the life and legacy of Anne Sexton, featuring readings and reminiscences by four friends and colleagues
Join us for our annual tribute to Anne Sexton, who wrote fearlessly about family, sexuality, despair, and joy, pioneering a radical new poetry. Four writers who knew her well will read from her poetry and from their own writing.
The friends and colleagues who will gather to remember Anne Sexton are: Victor Howes, fellow teacher; Lois Ames, who co-edited Sexton's Life in Letters; Robert Clawson, who managed Anne Sexton and her Kind - the poet's rock band; and Suzanne Berger, one of her students. A portrait of Anne emerges from their recollections and stories and from her own writing. Funny, free-spirited, transgressive, and wildly intelligent, she broke away from the conventions of suburban middle class life. The aggressive, disturbing honesty of her writing still influences poetry today.
Weather permitting, the program in Forsyth Chapel is followed by a walk to Anne Sexton's grave site.
Tickets will be available at the door.
There is plenty of free parking along the driveway entrance to Forest Hills. The Cemetery is an easy walk from the Orange Line T, Forest Hill Stop, via the Tower Street shortcut; see website for directions. If you plan to take the T, please bring a flashlight to help guide your exit, as it will be getting dark by the end of the program.
11/16/2007 2:41:31 PM by Sharon | |
Monday, November 05, 2007
I just finished Diane Vadino's amazing debut, Smart Girls Like Me, last week. In preparation for the review I've been assigned to write, I Googled around and found her also-amazing and mouth-wateringly delicious fashion-and-shopping blog, Bunnyshop. (Bookmark. This. Now.) For a few days, I've been thinking about all the things I adore about Smart Girls while trying to figure out a way to discuss and justify the fact that it's packaged in a baby-pink cover with a picture of a rack of designer clothing. Because, you know.
What I couldn't understand was why I was forcing myself to care. A good book is a good book is a good book, even if the jacket art suggests something that will probably result in many incorrect snap-judgements. Because while Smart Girls is being marketed toward girls who love In Her Shoes and The Devil Wears Prada, it isn't anything like either of those novels. It's kind of like the fake-Chanel necklace I was staring at on the Forever 21 website today. I'm going to buy it, and I'm going to love it, and wearing it is going to make me exceedingly happy. Still, there will always be someone out there with the real Chanel necklace who thinks I'm a varnished fool. Oh well?
Earlier today, I was catching up on GalleyCat when I found this posting, "Don't Let the Pink Cover Faze You." It establishes just why Smart Girls is neither chick-lit nor "trick-lit," Seth Godin's lit-term-of-the-month.
Trick-lit, according to Godin: "A chick-lit novel that pretends to be something else, hoping to rope people in with an interesting premise. 30 pages later, you discover that you were deceived, that it's just another piece of genre trash." Godin's definition kind of makes my skin crawl. Like, God forbid someone recommends a novel is of a lighter fare than James Joyce! You've been completely HAD! Alert The Paris Review! Have David Remnick revoke this person's library card IMMEDIATELY. Tell NANOWRIMO! They shouldn't be allowed to participate anymore. I could keep going, but I won't.
I'm glad that GalleyCat brought this up, and I think I can write my review now. Perhaps more people will read Smart Girls and realize how lovely and good it is, and that sometimes the best writing can be a story about friendship and New York City and BOYS that someone has always wanted to tell, and is actually very, very astutely observed and witty. I love Diane Vadino so much more now, which is to say, a lot a lot a lot, and mostly that extra dose of lovin' is due to one of the things she said to Ron GalleyCat:
"I don't want to be too serenity prayer about it, but there are things I can control, and things I can't," Vadino said as we sat down to lunch in Brooklyn Heights, shortly after she had returned to New York City from an extended stay in London. "I just don't care anymore. I hate to be reductive about it, but I can choose to be obsessive or I can choose to just let it go."
Yes. Exactly. I'm buying my necklace. And I hope Diane Vadino comes to Boston on her book tour, because I would like to give her a really big, dorky high-five and maybe ask her if she wants to go boot shopping.
11/5/2007 4:52:25 PM by Sharon | |
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Today, researching a story about celebrity comebacks sent us scurrying back in time for an Internet refresher course on the history of spin and PR. Edward Berneys, the "father of public relations," was responsible for originating the idea that a company product or a celebrity's image could be revitalized if you tapped into the emotions of the public. He wrote a book, Propaganda, which was published in 1928, and you can read a fascinating excerpt of it here. Dig the Chomsky introduction.
Berney's most stunning PR coup was how he single-handedly made it acceptable - and desirable - for women to smoke. A psychologist told him (for a large sum of money, no favors in this business), that cigarettes represented penises, and if women associated smoking with independence, power, and freedom, it would be like they were lighting up their own dicks every time they bought a pack of Lucky Strikes. Below, YouTube explains how he spin-doctored "Torches of Freedom":
More on this later, but for now, we wonder how Bernays would have engineered a Britney Spears comeback after yesterday's custody and tanning salon mess. Alternative suggestions are welcome.
10/2/2007 3:18:21 PM by Sharon | |
Friday, September 28, 2007
Image via JudithHoffman.net
If we're ever wealthy and foolish enough to hire the Strand bookstore to Build A Library for us, we'd request blue and green Victorian era tomes, cause they're pretty. On our current budget, however, we can definitely manage a copy of Stephanie Myer's Twilight, which fellow Phoenician bookworm Deirdre recommended to us. Care to join the PHX book club? We don't actually have any meetings planned, but if we did, we could all take notes in these Moleskin notebooks, which were a favorite of Hemingway's, and which we always stupidly pass over for the plain spiral-bound reporter notebooks that come free with our job. So since we don't write in Hemingway's journals or write like Hemingway himself, we'll just have to settle for reading his LiveJournal. Shame he hasn't updated since 2001. Here are some actual famous people with LiveJournals, just in case you're in a web-journal reading mood. Actually, forget the computer altogether and take a good long lusty look at one of these vintage typewriters; we can't stop thinking about how badly we want one. Although we'll be satisfied with some typewriter jewelery. Perhaps we'll just make our an amazing purse out of an old hardcover. (More book-bags here). And after we're done pricking our fingers numb, we'll fantasize about the day someone gifts us a first edition copy of our favorite book ever, just because. Even nerds can dream big, right?
9/28/2007 3:39:44 PM by Sharon | |
Friday, September 21, 2007
There was only one new fall television program we were especially excited to see, and it finally made its debut this week. Good news: it really is the most Important show of our time! Gossip Girl, which airs on the CW on Wednesdays at 9 pm, was a delight. And we hear the original best-selling YA book series is even more delicious. Upper East Side prep schools are a bitch, eh? Glorious! Plus, just today we got a recommendation for Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass -- supposedly a favorite of Harry Potter afficionados. Oh dear, someone out there (dpritchard, we've missed you so!) will probably crucify us for this so very un-alternative and sugar-highish post (Friday!), so we'll do our best to counteract the damage with a link to this neat interview with F. Scott Fitzgerald, published now in the Guardian but originally in the New York Post back in 1936. Dig it.
9/21/2007 5:54:55 PM by Sharon | |
Monday, September 17, 2007
The New York Times T Style magazine has a lovely slideshow up that attempts to merge the contextual style of classic literature with a proper dress code. Our one gripe: where are the ladies? Click on the image above to view the rest of the spread.
9/17/2007 10:50:00 AM by Sharon | |
Friday, August 31, 2007
A few things we've been enjoying in lately:
The New York Times' Paper Cuts blog, maintained by the estimable Dwight Garner. He's on vacation now, but there are some wonderful recent entries here on what commuters read (or shouldn't read) on trains, as well as popular Christian sex manuals (which Garner doesn't think are much of a turn-on).
Maud Newton's excellent guest-blogged series on independent bookstores. Great stories and gossipy tidbits.
Hari Kunzru's short story "Magda Mandela," which appeared in the Aug 13 issue of the New Yorker. It's fantastic.
The latest batch of postcards on PostSecret. They've got a new book out, as well.
"The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue," an older Talk of the Town piece by Lillian Ross, might just be our favorite thing ever (in recent memory, of course).
Speaking of Ross, have you read Picture? We did, and we're kind of ridiculously obsessed with it, still.
Apparently, Nick Hornby wrote a YA novel titled Slam. It's sitting on our desk. We're not sure what to make of it yet.
For the long weekend, we've been saving the following, which we will read under the covers, AC on, in lieu of BBQs and shopping sales: Rishi Reddi's Karma and Other Stories, Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith (out this January by Canongate, we started it yesterday, snap judgement: odd but pretty?), and the new Vogue. Plans to buy Maus II as well -- a trip to the Harvard Book Store is in order.
What are you reading?
See you in September.
Love,
Word Up
8/31/2007 11:51:31 AM by Sharon | |
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
The YouTube tags for this one are: Bukowski, poetry, beer, shit.
He uses the word "moxie" which is amazing in and of itself.
Watch. Rewind. Repeat.
8/14/2007 9:16:27 PM by Sharon | |
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