Should you two be standing in front of a Muggle house in your robes?

Oh, that Hunter S. Thompson. What a card!

"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat," quoth Edgar Allan Poe.

If that didn't scare you, just look at the sneers on these two. Happy Halloween from TomKat and their little angel alien!

10/31/2006 11:12:06 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

At 31, Londoner BEN SCHOTT has already published three ridiculously detailed collections of notions and oddities that have sold two million copies worldwide. Now he’s moved on to the formerly antiquarian almanac; rather than predicting the year ahead, his Schott’s Almanac 2007 records the year past. He dotes on arcane topics like how to survive a bear attack, offers a mini-dictionary of “Hacker, Cracker & Geek Speak,” and rounds up the 10 top cities in the world that have been Googling for porn. (Birmingham in England has the collectively dirtiest mind.) Why this guy rejected GQ’s Man of the Year award is beyond us, but you can delight in his fanatical love for ephemera when he reads tonight at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | 6 pm | $3 | 800.542.READ.

10/30/2006 9:53:47 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Cary Tennis's Salon advice column, Since You Asked, is going to be turned into a book. And he wants readers to vote on the best ones (Site Pass required to view the full piece).

But he hasn't signed with Simon Spotlight or Random Hizzle, oh no. Cary's putting out this little baby all by himself because, when he tried dealing with the industry hobgoblins, things just got "weird and twisted." We don't blame you, Cary -- although you do strike us as a bit of a micro-manager:

"After an appropriate period of cursing and teeth gnashing, I decided we should do what feels right and publish it ourselves. That way the experience is authentic and down to earth and spiritually correct: It's just us funky West Coast weirdos publishing a book, celebrating this community of amazing readers and writers with amazing problems and solutions and wild ideas and feelings and life stories.

So that's what we'll do. My wife and I are going to design, edit and publish this. Between us, we have all the editorial, graphic production and design expertise required. Moreover, we have rather strong feelings about how it should look, how it should exist as an object. I never did like the idea of having the book publisher control the look of the book anyway. I don't like how most books look. I didn't want my book to end up looking like all the other books. I love books and I want mine to be a book for people who love books. I want it to look better than other books. I want it to be a wonderful object.

Not fancy, but cool and wonderful."

It is a nice idea (and yet another thing we'll be adding to our Amazon.com wishlist), but an anonymous Salon commentator points out the obvious:

"I'll type slowly since Salon's editors can't think fast.

Let's see...I can freely access and print any of Cary's columns I would ever care to save, assuming there would be enough to fill a book, let alone a matchbook.

Explain to me again why the fuck anyone would be dumb enough to buy a book of stuff they can get for free?

(When you figure that out you'll know why your Salon Premium hasn't done all that well, too.)

-- news flash: no one buys a cow when they get free milk"

Sad, but true.

We save Cary's columns all the time. Here's one: How do I overcome the intertia? (again, Site Pass required -- don't be lazy). Now, go listen to some of Cary's awesome audio rants.

10/27/2006 4:08:35 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

And Word Up is pleased to hear that she cut her teeth in book publishing. A certain Emily Gould is taking over the co-editor spot Jessica Coen vacated when she jumped ship to Conde Nast's Vanity Fair. Gould had been writing the new and previously anonymous Unsolicited column, which we heart to the max for shaking a middle finger at the stupid bobble-heads who run the industry. We especially love her "gentle advice" to authors authors and editors. We used to be a book publicist. We are allowed to laugh. We hope she keeps writing it, even if it means getting banned from Hyperion Books and blackballed from galley mailing lists.

The second new addition to Gawker is associate editor Doree Shafrir, editor of lit mag The Crier and a contributor to several publications, including Slate and the New York Observer.

Bring on the snark.

10/26/2006 12:19:57 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

If you know JULIA SWEENEY only from her Saturday Night Live running one-joke androgynous character sketch “Pat,” or her incredible This American Life contribution, this is your chance to catch up. Sweeney’s one-woman show God Said, Ha! — about how she and her brother Michael were diagnosed with cancer within months of each other (Michael did not survive) — won critical raves for its mix of humor and pathos and was turned into a film by Quentin Tarantino and a Grammy-winning CD. Her new Letting Go of God is about this lapsed Irish Catholic’s spiritual quest during and following those events. The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard is presenting Sweeney and her show for one night only preceding a film release, CD, and national tour, at Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy St, Cambridge | 8 pm | $19; $12 students | 617.496.2222.

Check out a video of her performance here.

10/26/2006 12:00:03 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

The Guardian's Michelle Pauli (aka TeaAndOranges Snookums) reports:

"The first time I meet Penguin's digital publisher, Jeremy Ettinghausen, I crash land at his feet. Admirably unperturbed, he shows me his house, we have a chat about Penguin's latest digital initiative, then fly to a library before he teleports me into the future."

Penguin worked with the London-based virtual world design agency Rivers Run Red to create an in-world version of Neal Stephenson's Snow Craft. Second Lifers can read excerpts of the text, listen to an audio clip, and follow a link which clicks through to a dedicated Second Life page on the Penguin website. The publisher is also developing a Second Life virtual bookshelf of other Penguin titles.

So what does this mean for you, toiling away on your first novel/screenplay/poetry collection/avant-guarde stream-of-consciousness memoir?

"This 'ground-up' approach to publishing within Second Life is interesting a publisher at the other end of the commercial spectrum. Neal Hoskins (avatar name Fernando Proctor) is the publisher-founder of Winged Chariot, a real-world small press specialising in children's literature in translation. He is a relatively newcomer to Second Life but, when we meet for a (virtual) cuppa by a (virtual) roaring fire in a (virtual) log cabin, he is keen to talk about the opportunities for developing literature within the world rather than bringing it in from outside.

In the virtual world there are benefits to being a small publisher, says Hoskins. You can move more quickly to experiment with new ideas, and there is less competition from the 'big guys'.

'I'd like to look for talent in here," he muses, 'I envisage starting small with something like a poetry or secrets wall where residents can leave notes about their Second Life experiences, and then publishing the best of them, like Paul Auster's True Tales of American Life. The book could even be brought back into the real world. We could open a fiction imprint list in Second Life, something that's really difficult for an independent publisher in real life.'"

This could be the new-wave of blogger book deals, so get on that before Simon Spotlight Entertainment forgets to offer you a package with a $L 5k advance. Chop chop!

ELSWHERE:
Read more about Second Life in Camille Dodero's (aka Lily Pixie) Does your life suck?

10/24/2006 1:17:08 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Given that sequels have become almost more common than originals, it’s no wonder that MICHAEL TOLKIN is attempting to get back in the game with a decade-late follow-up to his satire The Player. In The Return of the Player, old Griffin Mill is down to his last $6 million. He’s also got erectile dysfunction and the hots for his ex-wife, and he’s paralyzed by his fear that the world will end before he can escape to his very own private island. He needs more cool cash for this last, so a bank robbery is clearly in order. Tolkin dishes on Hollywood at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

ELSEWHERE:
A shitton of celebs made cameos in Robert Altman's adaptation of The Player.
Listen to NPR's Day to Day review of The Player.

10/24/2006 12:56:49 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Morgan Spurlock did it with Super Size Me and later 30 Days on FX. Now, rather than gorging on McDonalds to see if it has adverse effects, Seattle public radio commentator JON MOE decided to hang out with a bunch of Republicans for a month straight. Conservatize Me: How I Tried to Become a Righty with the Help of Richard Nixon, Sean Hannity, Toby Keith, and Beef Jerky is the result of his month-long immersion in Conservative Country. Moe visited a trancendentalist church, discussed issues with National Review editor Rich Lowry, and spent down time at the Regan museum and a gun-range to discover whether his decidedly liberal values are capable of a sudden turnaround. There’s no shock-and-awe transformation here, but Moe will share what he learned at Barnes & Noble at Boston University, 660 Beacon St, Boston | 7 pm | Free | 617.267.8484.

Also tomorrow, and also free, a panel talk at the Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Brookline Booksmith: (via Coolidge.org)

"Ever wonder what authors think about movies based on their books? Or, why moviemakers took your favorite novel and turned the girl into a boy, killed the dog, or added a love interest? Do authors get any say in the matter? Well, they're about to, albeit after the fact. And a moviemaker will tell us why changes are made when a story moves from one medium to another.

The NO, BUT I SAW THE MOVIE panel will be moderated by Lois Lowry, author of The Giver, which is currently being adapted for film. The panel will include two other children’s authors whose books have been portrayed on screen -- Phyllis Naylor, Newbery Award winning author of Shiloh, and Newbery Honoree Natalie Babbitt, author of Tuck Everlasting -- along with Randy Testa of Walden Media LLC, the company that has produced such adaptations as Beacuse of Winn Dixie, Hoot, Holes, How to Eat Fried Worms, and The Chronicles of Narnia, among others."

Seriously great line-up of YA authors. This is not to be missed, especially if your copy of The Giver is as well-worn as ours. Or if you get really pissed off about movie adaptations of incredible YA/children's lit books. Tuck Everlasting, a gut-wrenching YA novel that somehow involved a very adult-ish love story, did not a have fantastic book-to-film adaptation (though, we enjoyed it anyway -- Alexis Bledel was a really good Winnie). Hopefully The Giver will fare better, because we totally heart that book like whoa.

10/23/2006 3:53:42 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Right. First things first, here's your readings option for tomorrow:

Mrs. Dracula

ELIZABETH KOSTOVA was so obsessed with Dracula, she spent a decade researching the legend, originally inspired by “pleasantly creepy” tales her father told her about the vampire when she was a girl. Ten years later, the first-time novelist cashed into a publishing jackpot — a $2 million advance for The Historian, seven-figure rights to the film, dozens of rave reviews, and a #1 slot on bestseller lists. The big numbers surrounding The Historian are as much of a phenomenon among the literary set as the book itself. Or, one should say, books within a book — each of which involves meticulously intertwined mysteries set in three different time periods. The novel isn’t short on length (700-plus pages), or on horror (the narrative hinges on the story of a man called Vlad the Impaler), so get a double dose of goosebumps when she reads at Northeastern University, Snell Library, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston | noon | free | 617.373.5471 and then at the Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 7 pm | free | 617.499.2012.

Several people are all a-quiver about this:

You can smell the awkward and the Kibbles

The Globe's publishing guru David Mehegan reports that the Northampton family suing Augusten Burroughs, author of Running With Scissors, has reached a settlement with Sony Pictures. This somehow avoids a second lawsuit over the upcoming movie. Whatever, mega losers, we loved the book.

And finally, on an unrelated note:

Jeffrey Sebelia has our full endorsement. Good christ, the guy designed a perfectly wearable dress out of recycled newspaper.

Anything less, and we'll be assigning blame all over the place -- that includes you, Tim Gunn. Just keep those blindingly white feet of yours in check, mmkuh?

10/18/2006 3:49:42 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

It was a dreadful night for a number of reasons.

One would think that 800 individuals who gather in a high school auditorium in Natick to listen to, or perhaps even, celebrate, a story of three orphans whose parents perished in a suspicious fire and who had to live out their days of innocence being pursued by the most devious of men, deserve such punishment. But if you had witnessed the scene of terror in Natick on Monday night, in which fans of the Series of Unfortunate Events book series — children and adults and high school students and college hipsters and hipsters in training and four men with beards and a woman with a broken foot — came to meet Mr. Lemony Snicket and listen to a performance of the Gothic Archies, you would not come to that conclusion.

First, and most obvious, was the blaring absence of Mr. Snicket himself. When the Gothic Archies took the stage, the trio was only duo, with Stephin Merrit (he of the Magnetic Fields) holding his Ukele, an empty chair surrounded by percussion equipment meant to be played by Mr. Snicket, and someone named Daniel Handler on accordion.

When the announcer announced Mr. Snicket’s name, both musicians looked stage right, and saw nothing.

Handler, close-cropped hair and too-small suit, tried to “call” Mr. Snicket (I use “call” in “quotes,” since the “phone” he was “using” looked to be comprised of two carved wooden blocks connected with a string.) After Handler got the run-around with an operator (or at least that’s what he told us), he walked into the audience, took a book out of a child’s hand and began to excoriate about the saga of the Baudelaire orphans.

He went back up on the stage, and the duo played selections from The Tragic Treasury: Music for "A Series of Unfortunate Events", which compiles the theme songs the Gothic Archies wrote for each of the 13 volumes of Snicket's "Series of Unfortunate Events" series.

The lack of percussion made the arrangements sound downright ghastly. Handler attempted to fill the void with some uninspired vocal percussion, but it was not the same. The word “rip-off” kept floating through my mind, but since the event was free, a money-back guarantee was not in the cards. This was rather a different kind of rip-off — a rip-off the soul, as you will never be able to recover from seeing the looks on the children’s faces who walked all night to Natick to see their hero, only to be devastated by his absence. Yes, the crowd laughed heartily at Mr. handler’s sardonic antics. But it was a nervous laughter. A laughter that sensed something dangerous was just around the bend, and you might as well laugh now, because you’ll may never get the opportunity to laugh ever again, for the rest of your life.

After Mr. Handler offended Mr. Merrit’s musical ability, causing Mr. Merrit to walk off the stage in a sad, sad huff, Handler then plucked two horrified children from the audience to provide percussion. They were utterly inept and only added to the pain of the night.

Mr. Handler then apologized again for Mr. Snicket’s absence, and said he would sign everyone’s book with a “stamp” of Snicket’s autograph after the performance. (Though such a gesture seemed utterly ridiculous, hundreds of fans of the books would sit in the auditorium until well after midnight to meet with Mr. Handler and get this “signature.”)

Mr. Handler ended the performance with the sea chantey “Scream and Run Away,” which features the advice that if you ever encounter the devious Count Olaf, you should “run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run or die, die, die die die die die die.” Mr. Handler implored the audience to stomp our feet when he said “run,” and slump down and “play dead,” when he said “die.” The latter task was not too difficult to perform, as many in the audience already felt that a little part of them had died.

-Bill Jensen, Guest Blogging

10/17/2006 1:33:30 PM by Nina | Comments [1] |  

2 gauge plugs? You can do better than that, Stephen Elliott.

 

The perfect reading material to Yo La Tango’s new album, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass could be none other than STEPHEN ELLIOTT’s latest, aptly titled My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up. The episodic novel of 11 linked stories follows Theo, who goes from a group home for troubled teens in Chicago to finding literary success in San Francisco. Along the way he contends with sado-masochistic girlfriends who order him to wear butt plugs and give him black eyes. Elliott’s spare prose and fearless characters have earned comparisons to Bukowski, and he’ll read from these sexy semi-autobiographical tales with Word Up fave Steve Almond tomorrow at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | 7:30 pm | free | 617.244.6619.

 

 

10/17/2006 1:13:03 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Don't be jealous!

Why. Does. She. Have. SOMUCHFUCKINGHAIR?!

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
We’re tearing through NELL FREUDENBERGER’s debut novel, The Dissident, at a crazy pace, pausing only to marvel at how this white, Harvard educated, ex-New Yorker editorial assistant managed to capture the voice of Yuan Zhao, a Chinese performance artist and political firecracker spending a year in Los Angeles teaching at the St. Anselm’s School for Girls. Alternating with his narrative is a third-person POV that circles around the dysfunctional Traverses, the family hosting the Yuan’s stay. Gawker may have slammed Freudenberger for inspiring the ire of the literary world when her gorgeous face helped make her award-winning short story collection, Lucky Girls, even more palatable to the industry, but her good looks have nothing to do with the fact that she’s one of the most compelling young voices around. She’ll read at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | Oct 77 @ 6 pm | $3 | 800.542.READ. If you miss Nell tomorrow, you can haul it over to Newtonville books and see her on Wednesday 18 @ 7:30 pm for free.

A BLUE-EYED BEAUTY
Yes, Baby Suri lives, except by our calculations she looks about a year older than she’s supposed to be. In fact, we’re convinced Mr. and Mrs. Cruisazy bought her — there’s got to be a Scientology-approved baby-black market squirreled away somewhere. Celeb photog ANNIE LIEBOVITZ was the lucky lady to snap TomKat in all their domestic bliss, and her A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 is packed with provocative portraits (a fetal and stripped John Lennon wrapped around Yoko, a naked and knocked-up Demi Moore) culled from her career at Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Famous people really enjoy being naked and with child, don’t they? Someone please ask if Suri’s was wearing a tot-toupee when Liebovitz speaks at the Coolidge Corner Theatre | Oct 17 @ 6 pm | 290 Harvard St, Brookline | $2 | 617.566.6660.

Just make it happen.

 

10/16/2006 10:00:59 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

ALICE MCDERMOTT is a rare writer, the sort who keeps her work focused on one type of person (Irish Catholics) in one setting (Long Island), and never tell the same story twice. Her latest, After This, is a Vietnam novel full of the political and social chaos of the ’60s and ’70s as well as the tumultuous inner turmoil surrounding the six members of the Keane family. McDermott boils their history down into a poetic epic; she’ll read tomorrow at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 6 pm | free | 800.542.READ.

The novelist Kiran Desai won the 2006 Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for The Inheritance of Loss, which examines identity and the bonds of family, and is set in both India and Manhattan. Desai is the youngest female winner at 35, and the only one whose mom (Anita Desai) has also been nominated.  The Guardian UK has got all the dirt, of course. There's also a sweet contest in which you can win every Booker novel in print. Live it up.

10/11/2006 12:35:31 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

The Old North Bridge

Walden Pond

The Old Manse
(Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne lived here)

Why has no one informed us of the fact that Concord, MA is gorgeous? Lucky for you scribes and literary folk with a car and gas money, The Concord Festival of Authors begins next week on Thurs, Oct 19 and will run through Fri, Nov 3. Over 40 authors will be reading at various bookstores, libraries, and other venues in and around the Concord area. Too many to list here, in fact, so take a peek at the Concord Public Library's calendar for this year's schedule. Almost all of the readings/talks are free.

Some obvious stand-outs:

The New Literary Voices line-up on Sun, Oct 22
Rachel Kadish, Tolstoy Lied
Heidi Pitlor, The Birthdays
Adam Braver, Crows over the Wheatfield
Elisabeth Brink, Save Your Own
Mistress of Ceremonies: Lynda Morgenroth
Fowler Memorial Library, 1322 Main St, West Concord | 3:00 pm

The Wizard of Oz Family Party on Sun, Oct 28
There will, in fact, be people dressed up as the Lollipop Guild. Please note costumes are encouraged, not required, though you will feel extraordinarily awkward and un-Oz-like if you aren't dressed in full Tin Man or Dorothy gear. The choice is yours.
Concord Scout House, 74 Walden St, Concord | 2-4 pm

Dennis Lehane, Coronado: Stories on Wed, Nov 1
Mahoney Auditorium, UMass Lowell, South Campus | 7:30 pm

Suspense Night on Fri, Nov 3
Matthew Pearl, The Poe Shadow
Karen Shepard, Don't I Know You?
David Hosp, The Betrayed
Mistress of Ceremonies: Clea Simon, Cattery Row
Concord Free Public Library, 129 Main St., Concord | 7:30 pm

There's an amusing article over at The Foreword that poses the question of whether this sort of literary event should be considered a fundraiser. It involves a chiding phone call from Sandra Day O'Connor to organizer Rob Mitchell. Festivals like this don't make bank, and they survive mainly on the passion and commitment of their organizers, local authors and sponsors, and visiting bigger-name writers who are willing to participate. It's just...well...nice. And we're pleased to see this one has been alive and kicking for 14 years.

 

 

10/10/2006 1:29:15 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

The unspoken rule of “chicks before dicks” doesn’t seem to mean very much to Mattie and Jane, the two leading ladies in LISE HAINES’s second novel, Small Acts of Sex and Electricity. Both of them are in love with the same man, and in a bizarre, Wife Swap–esque switch, Jane takes a few weeks off from her family to indulge in some singleton adventures while unmarried college friend Mattie takes care of Jane’s two daughters and tries to rekindle an old relationship with Jane’s husband.

It sounds dramatic because it is, and perhaps Haines will tell you which girl got the guy when she reads tomorrow night at the Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 7 pm | free | 617.499.2012.

10/9/2006 3:44:26 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Marisha Pessl, literary hotshit of the moment (not according to the Dig) for her debut novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics, wrote an Op-Ed in today’s NYTimes that argues in favor of embracing the nefarious freshman 15. Pack it on, she says, because there’s plenty of time for rules and restraint after you graduate. College is all about excess and salads will make you sulky. It’s not a bad message. But she sure loves her literary devices, particularly alliteration. Here’s the piece, in an alliterative nutshell:

 

Pessl references cravings for “pizza, pasta, Twinkies and Tab” and suggests that the problem with “collegiate calorie counting” when studying “Kierkegaard or Conrad” after snacking on “seitan and soy chips” is “stomachs seasick, sometimes outright ill.” It’s not the time for dieting because college is “four fleeting years of free-spirited indulgence,” in which you might meet a French girl and “soon you’re specializing in Sartre.” It’s a time to be “a fool, fall flat, find out you . . . never really had a clue” and if you “gain a little gut studying Goethe,” don’t lose sleep, and eat cake while you can, because after you graduate, those study sessions with “beer, Byron, and buffalo wings” will feel like a sweet dream. In the words of Sharon, she's hot & high-rollin.

10/6/2006 12:54:32 PM by Nina | Comments [2] |  

A 10^th anniversary edition of David Foster Wallace’s juggernaut of a novel Infinite Jest is being released in November. (Amazon lists the date as November 13). And according to the Howling Fantods, the premiere site for all things DFW, Dave Eggers wrote the forward.

 

In other DFDubs news, John Krasinski, the 26 year-old Newton native who plays Jim on The Office, is making a movie based on Wallace’s short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (which includes the story “Forever Overhead,” which I read as a 13 year old in the Best American Fiction anthology of 1992; I fell hard for DFW after that). It’s unclear, though, whether the movie will incorporate all the stories, or the four in the collection titled “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” interview-format stories in which men reveal their licentious sexual proclivities.

10/5/2006 11:51:02 AM by Nina | Comments [0] |  

Eve Ensler + Salma Hayek: "Valentine's Day is stupid."

EVE ENSLER of The Vagina Monologues brings us her equally provocative and politically charged memoir, Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World. That would be a post-9/11 where, awash in Code Red security precautions, she weaves her personal history of an abusive childhood with stories of other women — Afghanis forced into burkas, female prisoners in upstate New York. Go egalitarian when she reads tomorrow at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St, Brookline | 6 pm | $2 | 617.566.6660.

10/4/2006 5:48:09 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

A long time ago, when we were temping in an office that reduced us to a trained data-entry monkey, the only way we could halt the onset of a mental breakdown was to stream archived episodes of NPR’s This American Life off the internerd. It was in this way that we discovered the delightfully snarky DAVID RAKOFF, who not only dresses better than like-minded contemporary David Sedaris but often delivers the acidic wit with 10 times the panache. And then there’s his Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, which, lets face it, kicks major subtitle ass. Nobody’s off the hook in Rakoff’s essays — not even Karl Lagerfield. He’s at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

STREAM our fave Rakoff contributions to TAL:
1. Promised Land: He does a 20-day fast to see if it brings him any form of enlightenment. Weird and disturbing things come out of his body.
2. Meet the Pros: He visits his dream job, the craft department at Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Quite literally, one of the funniest things we've ever heard.
3. Office Politics: He's an editorial assisant at a NYC publishing house, but his boss keeps calling him a secretary. Major dramarama.

10/3/2006 2:09:32 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

A few snippets for your Monday afternoon:

Via Pitchfork:
The list of bands Peter Ellenby has photographed since he began in 1994 reads like the graduation announcement for a whole class full of indie rock elites, from role models such as Sonic Youth, the Flaming Lips, Frank Black, and Mike Watt to the more recent likes of Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, and ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.

To commemorate Ellenby's work, Chronicle Books released the first book-length collection of his photographs this week. The book's name is Every Day Is Saturday, and it comes with a 21-track compilation of previously released songs by the bands featured in the photographs, including Death Cab, Grandaddy, Beulah, American Music Club, John Vanderslice, and John Doe. Doe (originally of X) also wrote the foreword to the book, and Tim Scanlin of Actionslacks wrote the introduction.

Full compliation tracklist here.

Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep, one of our favorite reads of 2006, will be at Newtonville Books tomorrow at 7 pm. It's part of their Books & Brews series, so go buy her a drink and have her sign your book. We'll be there, and possibly will return with a little report about it on Wednesday, just in case you decide to care.

Finally, what the hell is up with Ms. Emma Watson suddenly deciding she might be too busy to spend her entire life making Harry Potter movies? Okay, no. Let's clarify. We Heart Emma Watson (even though she's clearly a bazillion times more gorgeous than Hermione is supposed to be according to J.K. Rowling, which makes her blossiming transformation in recent volumes all the more "shocking"), and we also completely understand her need to take a step back from the HP whirlwind -- especially since she's making top marks in school and could be moving on to bigger and better things. Still. It's not okay. Either way, we're thinking we're going to dress up as Hermione Granger for Halloween this year, as 05's Angelina Jolie was a little too...pedestrian. High-brow style all the way for '06. Obvs. PS, it would really be great if a giving, bookish, and artistically minded soul out there would be willing to sew us a lush black cape and hand-embroider the Gryffindor crest on it. What? It's not that hard. 

More importantly, if you're planning on going as anything remotely connected to literature for HWEEN 06, we totes want to hear about it. And feel free to email us pictures...we may even do a little US WEEKLY style round-up of literary-themed costumes. You'd like that, wouldn't you?

10/2/2006 3:53:57 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |