Corrections and contrition:
New York Times book reviewer Jennifer Senior emailed (this is one way to hear from old classmates – insult them on the Internet!). She would like the world to know that A., she has no control over how her biography appears in the Up Front section of the book review, and did, indeed, tell the editors exactly what year she graduated, so that “early 1990’s” nonsense is all on them, and that B., she does not care for Hootie and the Blowfish (I, of course, miss them dearly). Sorry, Jen! Go Tigers!
And really, I should have figured that if anyone at the Times got hit on the head by a frozen block of pretension, it’s Might Makes Dwight Garner, whose Inside the List column this week takes swipes at Marley and Me, for being too popular (bad dog! No biscuit!), and at Diane Setterfield, for earning more money than Jim Crace and for not being Curtis Sittenfeld (truly, sins that many of us have committed. No biscuit for me, either, I guess).
The good news is that Mitch Albom's got a new book out, and I have to assume that Mitch is a bigger, juicier target for those who love to hate on popular fiction than anyone else on the list. Did you know you can buy FOR ONE MORE DAY at Starbucks? More importantly, does Dwight Garner know?
The 10! show was the most fun I’ve had on television in a long time. It was like sitting around talking about wedding registries and child-rearing…while grown men in lederhosen waited in the green room (click here to watch them dance!)
Last week's reading at Head House Books was great. There was a full house and a lot of thoughtful questions. Best of all, because the bookstore’s in my neighborhood, a lot of people who turned up know me from the park, or the preschool, or the coffee shop, so it was a very casual, intimate night (albeit kind of a crowded one).
In other news, Stephen King dishes about the writing life -- as exciting as watching paint dry, says he, and I'm hard pressed to disagree. And I just noticed that I made the same "Bain de Soleil is not pronounced exactly the way it is spelled" joke in two different books. I am mortified. Mortified, I tells ya!