One Day More:

Tomorrow my book tour begins. This article couldn't have come at a better time (via my friend Bella).

We're going to be shutting the lights out here at Where There's Smoke for the summer while I'm away and moving things over to the offical book site. Bookmark Now.net will be unveiled tomorrow.

Return of the Virtual Book Tour:

The Virtual Book Tour reappears today featuring author, eh, me. In anticipation of the release of Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times next week, I'm doing a Virtual Tour of many of my favorite sites, book-related and otherwise. Look for me over the next 3 days at VBT HQ.

Update on Book:

Just to let you know where I'm at.


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In a Room Full of Lights...

Wherein we discuss my hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Cost Plus World Market and a mystery song. Can you name it?


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Lame-o Blogger:

Hey ya'll, been wayyy too busy to blog over here. Book-related business is kicking my ass, but in a good way. I'm going to try to do some audioblogging from the Ann Arbor Book Festival, which I leave for tomorrow. I'll be speaking at 10 AM on Saturday in the Chemistry Building, a panel called "Publishing in an Unreaderly World." If you're around, why not say hello?

Sunday Morning Shards #27: "The Next Day Edition"

On my mind and in the reading queue this week.

*Webzine is back! (via Matt Haughey).

*Berkeley Rep. Theatre has a play running called "The People's Temple", an oral history of Jonestown. It's just been extended through JUne 5. 

Steven Johnson recommends Devon Think, a software tool for book-length research projects. I'm thinking of getting it for book #2.

*When in Baltimore, I highly recommend a trip to the American Visionary Art Museum (what is visionary art?).

*The trailer for A Scanner Darkly sure looks cool.

*How NBC went from a first to last place network in one season.

*Reinventing NPR for the 21st century.

*Book comes out in 16 days. It barely seems real.

Read Recently #7: Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

 

Backstory: I'll read anything Sarah Vowell does. And buy it in hardcover. So when I saw this one at The Booksmith, I grabbed it immediately and moved it to the front of the queue. I started reading it maybe a week later and soon it was following me on the bus, to the gym and the bathtub. At 250 pages and change, it didn't last long.

Notes: Sarah Vowell got fascinated with presidential assassinations and takes a road trip to visit historical sites even tangentially connected with the killings and deluted little men who pulled the triggers. Her friends, sister and nephew come along. Wisecracking and trivia abound, which is more than ok by me.

Verdict: Vowell, a self-proclaimed Americana nerd, will always be a favorite of mine. I just find her prose and normally her attitude, smart, funny and compulsively readable. Which is why I'll probably still buy her books even when they let me down. Vowell focuses resolutely on the deaths of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley which just be all that interests her but not even mentioning Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald or why they aren't included seemed bratty to me. Yes, we all been conspricacy-theoried to death. So say so and move on. Not mentioning it at all is like devoting a book to American car companies and leaving out Ford.

Also we're definitely reading a successful author at work here. The scrap and cynicism of Take the Cannoli and Partly Cloudy Patriot has been replaced by a vague sense of humoristic entitlement, of too many jokes forced into too many awkward places because the writer thinks every utterance she makes is hilarious. or at least believes we should think so. Most of them are but the presumption, as a reader, left me edgy and a little uncomfortable. Which is why I can't recommend AV as heartily as I can Sarah Vowell's earlier books, much as I would like to.

Day of Repose:

Wherein I celebrate Saturday morning, desserts and my mom's favorite book.


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One Sentence Movie Reviews #32: The Pawnbroker

The Pawnbroker (1964): "The past will continue to haunt you if you let it."

Globe Trotting Gnomes:

My friend Christine explains why two plastic gnomes have gone from being drunken letches to world travellers. The photos prove it. I plead "No Contest."