Currently buried under a mountain of snow at 79th and Broadway

Nonfiction of note from this week's deals:

Erica Heller's YOSSARIAN SLEPT HERE, a humorous, moving memoir of her childhood and her parents, Shirley and Joseph Heller, set against the backdrop of the Apthorp apartment building where the Heller family has lived for decades, [sold] to Sarah Hochman at Simon & Schuster, by Henry Dunow at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner, for publication in Fall 2011 (the 50th Anniversary of the publication of CATCH-22) (world).

You know what this means, right? They were the Ephrons' neighbors! Do you see a heartwarming literary buddy comedy in this? Me either.

But who knows if the Apthorp will still stand after today's epic blizzard of 8 to 13 inches. No city in living memory has ever had to bear so heavy a burden. It's just like in LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, except with convenience stores, and central heat, and high-fructose corn syrup. Well, if we all escape becoming the 21st century's Otzis the Icemen, let's meet up at the Harper's/ Housing Works reading tonight. (Julavits, Whitehead, Lipsyte; 7PM) I'll be the one who doesn't look cold.

Correction: Half Filmbook: "Julie & Julia" (2009)

In last week's review of "Julie & Julia," I wrote of the film's pertaining (or not) to the "chick flick" genre, "A fictional film would probably counterweight the countdown on Julie's blog with her biological clock." This weekend I was challenged on this statement with the contention that something similar was already in Powell's memoir. It's been a while since I read the book, so I took a peek when I was at Three Lives over the weekend and -- sure enough, first chapter, first page, Powell is at the obstetrician's being told she should hurry up and have children and feeling dangerously ambivalent about it.

Wormbook regrets the error.

Post-Its: Better than direct mail from John Grisham

I received a charity letter "from" John Grisham on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the mail while I was gone. Putting "Author" as part of your return address is a great way to get me to open your unsolicited mail; thank goodness spammers haven't caught on. (J.M. Coetzee wants to help me with the ladies? Sweet.)

• Because a lot of people are winding up here looking for it, my Frank McCourt note from a few weeks ago has been updated with public memorial information, as current as I could find. Not afraid to be servicey!
  


• My copy of LOLITA which I admitted to re-purchasing several months ago has still not turned up. I think it either has been lent out for a long time or got mixed in with another family member's books. I may even have been the forgetful lender; that's where my copy of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY was all this time, on the nightstand of the West Coast bureau (who has since finished it). Meanwhile, another book has pulled a disappearing act when I most wanted it, which is why you're not currently getting "Incomprehensible Notes From My Adolescent Copy of LEAVES OF GRASS."



• This Times article on how serendipity is becoming extinct has so many techspletives in it it's practically unreadable. But I'm posting it because "serendipity" is one of my favorite words, and I see no reason that we have to let the concept or the term go. Now get off my lawn.


• "If Nora Ephron had been born buxom, what else besides that article might she not have written?" I'm just catching up to Ariel Levy's profile of Nora Ephron in the New Yorker from a few weeks ago, whose second paragraph can only be described as an equal-opportunity offender for the ladies, but if you can make it past that there are some nifty tidbits about her life as a writer. Related: Tina Fey's forthcoming book (!!!) was described at deal time as being "in the style of Nora Ephron."
  


• INFINITE JEST corner: What the hell do you say when people unfamiliar with the book ask what it's about? This has happened to me several times and my latest answer was the best, but I feel as if I owe people more than a shrug and a smile. (Let us not speak of the back-cover copy, which is atrocious.) My latest answer incorporated the current situations of the various Incandenzas and, since I passed Interdependence Day a while back, a smidge of the alternate-reality politics going on behind them. The last thing I want to do is deter anyone from reading it, which a vague answer or an "It's extremely complicated" might.


• Finally, shamelessly, self-promotionally: The AV Club's latest Wrapped Up in Books round begins Aug. 17 on John Crowley's LITTLE, BIG. That's two weeks from now. It is possible that you have not started the book yet, and I am not judging you, promise. But now would be a good time to start it!