Odds, also ends

• Your eyes don't deceive: That's best-selling author Jennifer Weiner surveying the virtual crowd before her July release BEST FRIENDS FOREVER. I don't think she needs any help, but if I were her I would advertise on blogs I like (could be reading, could be otherwise) and do a major author tour.
• Flavorwire just had a little wrap-up of reading-related iPhone applications. The author concludes that reading on your iPhone is "worth it to carry a few books on it for when you get restless at a bar" and goes on to suggest reading ULYSSES at 1AM in bars, which coincidentally is going to be the theme of my New York-based social club should I ever found one.
• Speaking of New York and fancyphones, a Brooklynite used his subway commute to write an entire novel -- 45 minutes each way, twice a day. This is clearly a scheme for someone with supreme focus, but I can see how it would work. The author is Peter Brett, and the book is called THE WARDED MAN. Let's hope the MTA doesn't hear about it, or they'll just cut more service under the guise of making us all Joyces.
• Online reading clubs are the new hot thing: The New Yorker Book Club is "discussing" DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON, which I recommend, while New York magazine kicked off their "Vulture Reading Room" feature with Charlotte Roche's WETLANDS, the racy German bestseller that is either a boundary-breaking erotic classic or a dirty, dirty book. (I don't know since I haven't read it yet.)
• On a more personal yet still literary note, yesterday outside my apartment I nearly bumped into one of my high school English teachers from back home. While it would have been indecorous to point out, I am always a little pleased when this happens in New York, the "small town with a subway." He's not teaching any more or even working at my high school, but I'm reasonably sure that wasn't my class's fault.