Big Book Double Edition

Regular Commenter Elizabeth sent me this article on Facebook via Flavorwire: "10 Novels That We Dare You To Finish." It's pegged to PARALLEL STORIES, a novel coming out this fall I have, yes, already requested to review because I like punishment.

I've read four of the books listed -- INFINITE JEST, A SUITABLE BOY, GONE WITH THE WIND and WAR AND PEACE, plus excerpts from REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST (but probably wouldn't add up to one of its nine volumes). ATLAS SHRUGGED and THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES I definitely intend to get along to, along with the rest of Proust. (Seriously, I still own my copies from college, refuse to sell them, but also make them live in exile with my parents. So I'm ambivalent. Maybe next year?)

Henry Darger gives me the creeps, frankly. Maybe if I make it through that documentary about him first...

Oh yeah, and while I was there, Facebook's new time-machine function dug up the following:

Never forget. If you still haven't gotten around to it you can still go back and read my review.

Damned if you do...

Am I wrong in saying that this Wall Street Journal article on authors running their own promotions is kind of backwards in its opener? After describing Ayelet Waldman's giveaway efforts despite her own aversion to it, it really gives her the bitchback by describing her as someone who "frankly, seems approximately as shy as a Kardashian."

This seems a bit unfair. First, I take her honest word when she says she didn't want to do Facebook giveaways, but the fact is she still did. And second, the Kardashian sisters are a blight on whatever channel their 800 shows are on, and all Waldman did to earn her oversharey reputation was write one Modern Love piece. Come back when she is endorsing a perfume, I guess I would say.

Well anyway, Christopher McDougall of BORN TO RUN fame gets a brief mention further down without any snippiness. (But where is Jennifer Belle? NEVER FORGET.)

I do wonder though how the author got away with describing sex toy shop Babeland as "a sort of FAO Schwarz for adults." (Obviously, don't search for it at work.) I see a lawsuit a-comin'.