Better hold my MacArthur grant

I have been a Kindle owner for just over a year. I just now figured out how to change the font size. You guys, I'm going to read all the things so much faster! (...I'm so ashamed.)

Image credit: Hyperbole and a Half

Agree or disagree?

"A good author photo will last you several books. A truly iconic image can be repeated infinitely. If you are attractive enough, you can put the picture on your book. If you are a talented enough writer, no one will suspect that anyone buys your book because of what you look like." --Molly Lambert

"America, the next time you see me I'll be a bookshelf."

How your New York Times Book Review sausage is made

1. Take someone who clearly doesn't like memoirs because too many people get to write them, and there should really be a high council above to decide who deserves to write on. Or to be a little kinder, someone who maybe just doesn't want to be on the memoir beat any more, and would be happier writing about other genres. 
2. Assign that person 4 recent memoirs to review.
3. ????
4. Profit?*

All I can say is, Neil Genzlinger, you are entitled to your opinion. You even had me briefly at "current age of oversharing." But if you ever decide to write a memoir in your life, to put it mildly, you will struggle.

P.S. Is it still okay to write something autobiographical if you aren't doing anything with it? Please get back to me soon Asking for a friend!

*"New York Times Co. Posts $4.3 Million Loss," October 19, 2010

Notes from packing

EVIDENCE

Boxes of books packed so far: 11
Forecasted number of boxes remaining: 1
Books I found against the wall when I moved my largest bookshelf: 2, Meredith Hall's WITHOUT A MAP (read, donating) and Henry Miller's TROPIC OF CANCER (unread, holding onto because it's a mass-market paperback and on the Modern Library list)
And what else happened: The entire backing of the shelf, held on by a few flimsy nails, fell away, causing it to rock back and forth rather violently for a 6' particleboard mess.
Price of bookshelf in 2007: $25 from a Taiwanese grad student
People it took to carry 3 blocks: 2
Current destination: Lobby with curb potential
People it took to get it there: just 1 unbelievably strong person who happens to write this book blog
Secret source of strength: Taking all the shelves out that weren't nailed in... obvious.

Books donated so far during moving: Over 100, if you count from mid-November or so.
Primary recipients: the St. Francis Thrift Store on 96th Street, and the people in my building
Identity of the person or people who are taking most of the books I leave downstairs in the lobby: Would that I knew! We'd probably get along.

TIME's The Page blog is the latest to call Mark Salter the author of O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL. Note however that Salter has not commented nor has it been confirmed, so this is basically a list of coincidences.

I'm about a fourth of the way through this book and it is not magically full of insights on anything. The character of Maddy Cohan is kind of insulting, but not in a creative way. I'll probably still finish it because of an interesting plot development, which I both hope and fear will turn into something.

Please, make this movie

"If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead."

Filmbook: Your Oscar Nominees Reading List

• Charles Portis, TRUE GRIT (10 nominations, including Best Picture and a very young Best Supporting Actress)
• Ben Mezrich, THE ACCIDENTAL BILLIONAIRES ("The Social Network," discussed here to death; 8 nominations including Best Picture)
• Aron Ralston, BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE ("127 Hours," 6 nominations including Best Picture)
• Daniel Woodrell, WINTER'S BONE (4 nominations including Best Picture)
• David Lindsay-Abaire, "Rabbit Hole" (okay it's a play, but still -- 1 nomination)
• Chuck Hogan, PRINCE OF THIEVES ("The Town," one nomination)

The ceremony is February 27 and the one book on this list I would really like to read despite having already seen the movie is TRUE GRIT. I looked, I waited for the library book, and... I threw caution to the winds.

More business: The gleeful delete

It is a testament to the 3.75 regular readers of this blog, all genteel and did I mention very good looking, that I almost never get spamful or inappropriate comments. That said, to the Rockville Centre, New York resident who keeps leaving unrelated links to your self-published book: This is not your free billboard, so scram.

Business

Have you mailed me books or catalogs in the past, or would you possibly mail me books or catalogs at some point in the future? My mailing address has changed; if you would leave your contact info in comments or email me, lnvsml (at) gmail.com, I will update you.

(Please excuse the boring purposefulness of this post.)

#positiveday

Some people I follow on Twitter declared today Positive Day and it's something I think would be useful to observe across all my Internets. Hence:

• Is this weather not perfect for book-hibernation? (Caution: may not apply to Southern Hemisphere, equatorial regions, lizards.)
• I left some books in my lobby over the weekend, and someone wrote a thank-you note on the communal whiteboard. Not shabby! (Photo evidence forthcoming.)
• I got some quality time in reading yesterday while I was taking the subway everywhere.
• Even though most of my books are in boxes right now, it's only a temporary separation.
• Less than 3 months till THE PALE KING comes out. And O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL (feel compelled to write the whole title) is out tomorrow.
• Down to 2 library books! And one is finished!

NBCC Finalists: The Usuals, Plus Murray, Smith, Mukherjee, Hitchens

I didn't vote on the finalists for this year's National Book Critics Circle Awards, but I'm excited to get some of their picks done before the winners are announced March 10th. Especially intrigued by COMEDY IN A MINOR KEY and the Biography category (hey Marjorie, is that the Montaigne book you raved about?)

Also nice to see that David R. Dow is getting some notice for AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EXECUTION, his memoir on defending death-row prisoners. It's the kind of quiet but powerful book Twelve is staking out a name printing.

When You Say Wharton, You've Said It All

Or have you? THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and THE HOUSE OF MIRTH are just two of the books on Doree Shafrir's terrific list of favorite New York fiction. Our lists would overlap in a lot of places but I'm so happy to see THE BEST OF EVERYTHING on there as a choice I think is somewhat overlooked. And HARRIET THE SPY! A book I never really associated with New York City, but she did eat egg creams and own a dumbwaiter, so.

Tournament of Books '11

The bracket isn't live yet, but the Morning News' annual best-of feature has posted its list of contenders so you can start reading before the March 7 start. The books are also 30 percent off at Powells.com, which is... very enticing.

And in one pivotal scene, a bear shits in the woods

The New York Post speculates that McCain's ghostwriter Mark Salter is behind O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL, the PRIMARY COLORS of our time. Also, that the book "isn't flattering" to politicians. Really?!?!??!

Nevertheless, I've preordered my Kindle copy so I can read it before and around the State of the Union. I hope it's entertaining, or at least not racist.