Another holiday, another Jon Cotner holiday slideshow. Here he and his wife took to the streets of New York City and “asked 25 strangers to tell [them] their holiday wish.” (Previously.)
A Holiday with Strangers
MLP Shuts Down
Mud Luscious Press — the outfit responsible for consistently gorgeous books like Mathias Svalina’s I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur and Robert Kloss’s The Alligators of Abraham — is closing up shop. Go load up on their remaining inventory. You won’t be sorry.
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Thursday Links
Alas, the Tournament of Books is over for my bracket as it was revealed that the “Zombie Round” brought Against the Day and Absurdistan back into the competition. With my finalists now officially out of the competition my bracket is dead, and it looks like I’ll finish in the middle of the pack. Meanwhile, fresh off the Oprah selection shocker (more on that in my next post), I’m think The Road is a lock to win this thing.Book Chronicle has organized an award for litblogs. In my post about book blogs being snubbed by the major blog awards, I argued that book blogs didn’t need to recognized in this way to legitimize them. Still, I do appreciate Book Chronicle nominating The Millions for their award.Harry Potter obsessives can now have a look at the cover for the final book in the series.The Paris Review has given its $10,000 Plimpton Prize for Fiction to Benjamin Percy, for his story “Refresh, Refresh,” which is excerpted on magazine’s Web site.Tom Bissell reviews Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at Wet Asphalt.
Literary Birthdays
New Directions turned 75 yesterday, so here’s a look back on the history of their colophon. In other birthday news, Iris Murdoch was born on this day in 1919, and tomorrow The Catcher in the Rye turns 60.
Victor LaValle’s Exceptional Latest
Year in Reading alum Victor LaValle’s just-released novel The Devil in Silver was shouted out in our first Great 2012 Book Preview, and Nathan Huffstutter says it’s “exceptional.”
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I Don’t Want to Be the One Onstage
“Stop / fucking posting about / Klonopin, or cutting yourself / or throwing up—Save it / for a shitty poem like a normal / wretch.” On the anger and joy of Tommy Pico, a Native-American poet in Brooklyn, over at The New Yorker.