News

If this means print really is dead, well, good night, sweet print

You actually have to be the age of the ideal reader of “Shelf Discovery” to understand why being tweeted — even retweeted! — by Kim Wayans is so exciting.

July 25th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

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Look away from the podcasts! Look at the photo! Look at the pretty photo!

littlewomen Two things:

  • Listen to me on BOB EDWARDS. I say period 600 times.
  • Listen to me on TALK OF THE NATION. I do NOT talk about siblings locked in an attic who sleep together. (Oh, whoops — yes I do.)

In further upcoming podcasts, I discuss Neanderthal rape. No, no — YES I DO.

July 25th, 2009 at 1:05 pm

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Thinking NPR will go in a different direction

Talked Neanderthal booty and stinging welts on Casteel clan with the wonderful Kim Alexander of XM’s Fiction Nation. Podcast up soon.

July 23rd, 2009 at 1:00 pm

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Something I’ve been meaning to tell you (over and over)

(I ripped this off my other blog. I am too old to do Twitter, two blogs, two Facebooks and REAL LIFE, you know! But if you come eat a burger with me, there will be no false replication whatsoever, as long as you let me eat your fries.)

A) I’m going to be on TALK OF THE NATION TOMORROW (thursday) for like NINETEEN HOURS with MEG CABOT talking teen! Please listen.

2.) I was on THE BOB EDWARDS show today and we had a delicious time talking about rereads and teens and The Monkey Wrench Gang et al.

3) Reader’s Digest ran a lovely, strangely prose-poem-y rendering of my intro to Shelf Discovery.

ii) I’m not really supposed to link to nice reviews all over as such, but Teenreads really wrote THE LOVELIEST thing on Amazon and I want to link just to thank them.

2.2) Double X ran an excerpt with my piece on Daughters of Eve, with a headline that will seal the deal in my grand campaign to steer away from blind dates.

7) Michael Orthofer wrote a very respectful and thoughtful review with a strangely melancholy interlude on how much I had neglected the male perspective in the book. Men! I did not neglect the male perspective. I just wasn’t thinking of you at all. So, so different.

July 23rd, 2009 at 12:31 am

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Bob Edwards, getting Sirius part 2

I don’t know what you coffee-sniffers did this morning, but I was apparently…ON BOB EDWARDS! So exciting when you don’t know that’s going to happen! Saying things about rereading. Many, many things. Producer Cristy Meiner wrote a lovely essay on the site:

We re-readers are an often mocked group; I can’t even recall how many times my Mom has said to me, “WHY do you re-read books when there are so many books out there you haven’t read?!” I understand the question, I really do, and trust me, I’m doing my best to get through the hundred million or so that I haven’t read yet. But re-reading a favorite book from my youth is the book equivalent to settling down in a hot bubble bath: I relax and my tired brain sighs happily as I step back into a story I know and love.

Listen here.

July 22nd, 2009 at 1:15 pm

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Partial Coverage

Would you like to win a free copy? You know you would! Proceed!

July 21st, 2009 at 3:55 pm

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WITH original covers

First, let me just say how mad I am at this book. Do you have any idea how much it’s added to my to be read pile? I’ve read maybe half of the books covered in Shelf Discovery, but now I have to re-read them, plus read the other half for the first time. Talk about pressure.

Another nice mention about Shelf Discovery in the Chick Manifesto blog…it is indeed my dearest dream that such a flood of eBay buys follows publication that all these books are re-released in handy omnibus editions.

July 18th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

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Sirius conversations

Just a reminder — I will be on Bob Edwards July 22nd and NPR’s Talk of the Nation July 23 and some other Sirius show I cannot remember the name of shortly thereafter.  I even turned down car service in D.C. — which seems virtuous but, given traffic there, I suspect was actually not.

July 18th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

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As certain of my relatives would say…what were other four?

Reader’s Digest has named Shelf Discovery…. a top 5 summer book pick! And excerpted it w/my Good Earth reveries.

July 16th, 2009 at 9:48 pm

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Okay, okay, boys can get credit IF THEIR DIRECTIONS *LEAD* TO REAL READING

My delightful designer, seeing the hash of directions to Maddow show below, informs me of the following:

BTW, you can get iTunes links by right clicking on them and selecting “Copy iTunes Store URL”

And provides URL.

Maybe men DO deserve to get paid more…?

July 15th, 2009 at 3:12 pm

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What Happened to Anna K.!

anna_k_cover Head World Librarian Nancy Pearl picks my friend Irina’s WHAT HAPPENED TO ANNA K., the best book ever, for best book ever. DO, do do go buy.

Discovering a first novel that I love and want to share with others reaffirms my faith that it’s still possible to find books that offer me insight, knowledge and pleasure in a voice I’ve never heard before. Irina Reyn’s What Happened to Anna K, a retelling of Anna Karenina, was such a book for me.

July 15th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

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Air America, iTunes Green 960, WHAT HAPPENED TO DIALS

The marvelous Scott Westerfeld, whose books I kept trying to sneak into a recent Newsday shoot, was interviewed with me by Ana Marie Cox on Rachel Maddow’s Air America radio show. In the course of a lively conversation, we had a big, big fight over whether or not boys’ reading airplane manuals is reading, mainly because I do not care what boys do, and men get away with everything. For this cause, I fly a flag. But Scott is wonderful as is his wife Justine, and you should buy all their books.

You can decide for yourself if the fact that I would have been shit out of luck had Scott not put up directions to how to listen to the show means he wins or I win. BUT: Here’s how you listen (remember radio? I do):

a) Search the iTunes Store for “Maddow 960.”
b) Click on the green Rachel Maddow icon.
c) Select the 06/30/09 episode.
d) Listen and be amazed (or at least amused).

July 15th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

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MORE APPRECIATION (for bloggers)

I feel like I should put a disclosure in this review — Lizzie Skurnick is my best friend.

The problem with such a disclosure is, of course, that Skurnick and I have never met. (I hope Skurnick isn’t now on the phone to her lawyers, reporting me as a potential delusional stalker). But having read Skurnick’s essays on teen books, Shelf Discovery, I am convinced that somehow we are friends. How else to explain how she wrote about my favorite books? She has snuck into my house and looked at my bookshelves; she has remembered the titles I have forgotten; she has eavesdropped on my fifth, seventh, ninth grade self as I sat and talked books with my friends.

A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy wrote a deeply nice post about the book. No worries: I think as long as one does not feel one is VC ANDREWS’ best friend, one can be considered within the boundaries of the law (moral and actual).

July 13th, 2009 at 11:49 am

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Much appreciated

Now, I don’t want to alienate the (considerable) male readership of The Blogulator, but I need to say something to all the ladies in the crowd, and it is this: If you are not reading Lizzie Skurnick‘s book columns on super ladyblog Jezebel (most importantly Fine Lines, but also Shelf Pleasuring, if you know what’s good for you, which I’m sure you do if you ever pilfered your parents’ copy of Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bearand read it with a flashlight in your closet like, um, some people), you are doing yourself an extreme disservice.

OHD of the Chris and Qualler blog wrote a LURVELY post on the book that I will not attempt to demur about etc. because it’s too hot for that kind of thing.

July 12th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

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Sound check

Was interviewed by the legendary Bob Edwards of XM, the lively Ana Marie Cox of Air America and the eruditely enthused Michael Cart of YALSA for incoming show/stream/podcast. Will provide links once I find where they store radio in 2.0.

July 7th, 2009 at 3:45 pm

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