In which Jami Attenberg (whose forthcoming The Middlesteins made it to our big 2012 second half books preview) discusses the outright mockery of Jeffrey Eugenides’s pseudo-famous vest in the web advertising campaign (which–full disclosure–also ran on The Millions) for Jennifer Weiner’s The Next Best Thing: “Hit Me with Your Vest Shot.”
Pun titles for the win
“Both a gem and a bomb”
Hints of Granite
Recommended Reading: Charles Simic on drinking wine in New Hampshire.
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Indie Booksellers’ Choice Awards
Our own Emily St. John Mandel won one of the inaugural Indie Booksellers' Choice Awards yesterday for her novel The Singer’s Gun. The other honorees for this award, which was voted on by indie booksellers around the country, were Paolo Bacigalupi for The Windup Girl, Adam Levin for The Instructions, Karl Marlantes for Matterhorn, and Nina Revoyr for Wingshooters.
Waywords and Meansigns
Recommended listening: Waywords and Meansigns, a new project that's set out to record Finnegans Wake in its entirety and set it to music. The complete work will be released on May 4th, but there are already a few samples available online.
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Weather Permitting
What can you do with all the snow? Shelley Jackson is making stories out of it. The artist is writing a story entirely in snow. You can read the first 200 words of her tale on her Flickr. It begins, "To approach snow too closely is to forget what it is..."
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Graywolf’s All-American Sale
Graywolf Press is having an All-American Sale this month, and that means you can celebrate Independence Day by grabbing any books with “America” in their title for 30% off. Each purchase will also include Elizabeth Alexander’s Praise Song for the Day chapbook – featuring the poem read at Barack Obama’s first inauguration.
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