January 2012
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December 2011
7 posts
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I want to mention two things about yesterday’s post:
I made a few changes to it, mostly tinkering with some sentences, but also I had named the Kindle Direct Publishing program wrong and made a few errors in that bit, so it’s fixed.
I had been working on it for a couple of days and probably would have kept fiddling with it and never would have published it, except that yesterday my...
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The more I think about the latest Amazon outrage, and filter through my lack of shock, then my sadness at my lack of shock, then my sadness at my sadness of my lack of shock, the thing that really bothers me is that Amazon seem to be obsessed with making decisions that make people angry at them. Which seems like a terrible way to run a business. Which bothers me because I really want to fix it,...
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“Even a sane man, I thought, would consider suicide in such a situation, if only...”
– page 66, By Blood by Ellen Ullman.
November 2011
4 posts
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A blog post for February
I recently finished a forthcoming book (well, a sort of book. It’s bound like a book, anyway) called The Lifespan of a Fact.
If you haven’t heard of it yet, I suspect you will soon. It’s by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, and by “by”, I mean, it consists of an essay that D’Agata wrote, surrounded by Fingal’s fact-checking, D’Agata’s...
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October 2011
3 posts
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“In an impressive, nationwide campaign to remind voters of Crédit Mobilier, and...”
– —-page 60 of Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.
A beet! A BEET! THE HEADBOARD OF HIS BED! It is passages like this that have made me a fervent reader of presidential biographies.
It might also interest you to know that...
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September 2011
7 posts
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How I Got Organized, Part Five: How I’m Different...
This is the fifth of five blog posts about organization and how I got some, against all expectations. They started life as an attempt to get my thoughts in order for a session on efficiency in bookselling that I’m presenting next week and got out of hand. I assure you nobody is more surprised than I am that I’m hosting a session about organization, but these posts explain how that...
How I Got Organized, Part Four: Why It Worked
This is the fourth of five blog posts about organization and how I got some, against all expectations. They started life as an attempt to get my thoughts in order for a session on efficiency in bookselling that I’m presenting next week and got out of hand. I assure you nobody is more surprised than I am that I’m hosting a session about organization, but these posts explain how that...
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How I Got Organized, Part Three: What I Learned...
This is the third of five blog posts about organization and how I got some, against all expectations. They started life as an attempt to get my thoughts in order for a session on efficiency in bookselling that I’m presenting next week and got out of hand. I assure you nobody is more surprised than I am that I’m hosting a session about organization, but these posts explain how that...
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How I Got Organized, Part Two: What I Did
This is the second of five blog posts about organization and how I got some, against all expectations. They started life as an attempt to get my thoughts in order for a session on efficiency in bookselling that I’m presenting next week and got out of hand. I assure you nobody is more surprised than I am that I’m hosting a session about organization, but these posts explain how that happened. I...
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How I Got Organized, Part One: Why I Cared and Why...
This is the first of five blog posts about organization and how I got some, against all expectations. They started life as an attempt to get my thoughts in order for a session on efficiency in bookselling that I’m presenting next week and got out of hand. I assure you nobody is more surprised than I am that I’m hosting a session about organization, but these posts explain how that happened. I...
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“It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he...”
– The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky), page 44. I have been reading this book all summer and have not yet liked it that much, but had to read it for classics book group. When I sat down to read the last part this week for our final discussion, I found that I did...
August 2011
8 posts
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“The reason people love cricket is that it’s cricket. It’s a difficult game, and...”
– Jenn and I asked Nick Harkaway to explain cricket to us. Despite surely having several dozen more important things to do, he did. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, especially if you’ve been feeling confused by the Leg Before Wicket rule.
“Reminds me of a chilled-out Iris Murdoch. A pleasure to read all of the right...”
– Perfect handsell of The London Train by Tessa Hadley. I love you, The Bookseller Crow.
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"Geek girls" and the problem of... →
This is an interesting link making the rounds.
Not much in it about the book world, but it did cause me to flash back to a moment at a book conference earlier in the year at which there was a panel called “Making Nonfiction Sexy.” Also, the confusion and then, anger, I felt as a result. Because why on earth does nonfiction need to be sexy? Why should we want that? By what definition...
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“He went to bed with a rich and glorious evening, and he awoke at seven to find...”
– Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky by Patrick Hamilton (NYRB), page 62.
On the off chance you are going through a breakup, I recommend this book.
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THE DAMNED UTD by David Peace
This book is very good and it’s a shame that it’s not available in the States. Although I guess that a book about the brief tenure of a beloved and eccentric football club manager at a rival club does not have a big demographic here. Still, as The Times (the British one, not the Gray Lady) said:
“Probably the best novel ever written about sport.”
Which I mostly quoted...
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Two books to gnaw on
I have recently finished two books that made me feel better about whatever the fuck is happening to our country, not to mention how insane everyone is, especially because it seems like everyone gets crazier by the day. So I would like to recommend them to you.
If you are the sort of person who frets about abstinence-only pledges, and endless infidelity scandals and the gross way the media...
July 2011
1 post
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“Sometimes it’s quite easy to run. I step out on the track, and I run...”
– from “Days” in The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg.
June 2011
10 posts
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“There’s this terrible idea that the things you do are like this manifesto...”
– page 128, The Chairs Are Where The People Go by Misha Glouberman with Sheila Heti.
The classification on the back of the book describes it as “philosophy,” which at first seemed wrong to me, because philosophy makes me think of a particular class in college that was dull. It clarified a...
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“We are, at bottom, a creative business. We are fighting for share of mind...”
– from What Men (and Women) Talk About When They Talk About Publishing (Part 2) by Don Linn.
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“Men do not like to die. But from time to time, given that they do not have to...”
– page 220 of The Judges of the Secret Court by David Stacton. Most of the book is as blunt as this quote, and as ugly as you might think a book about John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln’s assassination and the chaotic aftermath of Washington DC and the South after the Civil War would be. It is...
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“From being a silly girl, she had turned overnight into the sort of woman he...”
– a father ruminates on his daughter’s sudden maturity on page 118 of The Judges of the Secret Court by David Stacton.
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“Mr. Lincoln was dying, and there was nothing to be said about that. He was a...”
– page 65 of The Judges of The Secret Court by David Stacton.
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“One will never be famous merely by doing what one can do. One must do more than...”
– page 28, The Judges of The Secret Court by David Stacton, just reissued by NYRB.
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“Leaving behind his ruggedly blue-collar life as a railwayman, Alan Scott chose...”
– More Supergods. What is it like inside your head, Grant Morrison?
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“Batman knew what it was like to trip balls without seriously losing his shit,...”
– Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human by the one and only Grant Morrison (Speigel & Grau, July 2011). This book is bonkers, but I guess that’s what I was expecting.
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WORD is hosting a China Mieville event tonight
and thank God I’m not introducing him, because right now my head is like the Malkovich-Malkovich-Malkovich scene, except it is going Mieville-Mieville-Mieville about everything.
May 2011
5 posts
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“He rationed exclamation points, cursed them by lunch, fell in love with them...”
– page 150, Zone One by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, Oct 11).
(Yes, it’s the Colson Whitehead zombie book, except for how it’s a book about zombies in the same way that Animal Farm is a book about pigs. Just finished it a few hours ago and am still letting it settle, but I think it might...
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robblatt asked: What's your favorite cheeses for the summertime? This may or may not be related to me saying "I haven't been to the book store in a while."
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April 2011
9 posts
Anonymous asked: Do you think Tina Fey is a funny writer?
Anonymous asked: This reminded me of you:
http://www.byronegg.com/bookfest.php
http://www.byronegg.com/bookfest.php
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“I feel—”
“Yes?” She had a certain longing look in her eyes that made him want to rip the door open and kiss her.
“I feel—” She hesitated and bit her lower lip. “I feel like…”
Dammit all, she felt as if she wanted to kiss him. He could tell.
She lifted her chin and suddenly looked noble and passionate, like Joan of Arc. “I...