i did not just cry. i WEPT.
staff:

Join us Friday the 19th at Housing Works Bookstore!
We are excited about this for many reasons including but not limited to:

There is an open beer & wine bar from 6:30-7:30!
The first 50 people through the door get a free Tumblr tote bag!
The fine folks at Ecosystem are giving everyone a custom Tumblr notebook!
Look at the lineup!
We love to read!

staff:

Join us Friday the 19th at Housing Works Bookstore!

We are excited about this for many reasons including but not limited to:

  1. There is an open beer & wine bar from 6:30-7:30!
  2. The first 50 people through the door get a free Tumblr tote bag!
  3. The fine folks at Ecosystem are giving everyone a custom Tumblr notebook!
  4. Look at the lineup!
  5. We love to read!
if you aren’t following this blog, you absolutely must! just yesterday i was thinking how great a literature flavored post would be and lo and behold…

if you aren’t following this blog, you absolutely must! just yesterday i was thinking how great a literature flavored post would be and lo and behold

covert ops.

when i was eight or nine my dad clipped a desk lamp to the side of my bed for nighttime reading. after catching me reading when i was supposed to be sound asleep a few times, my parents started to patrol the hallway to make sure that i wasn’t still up and buried in a book. i became a pro at detecting the first signs of movement on the other side of the house—my ears would perk up at the slightest sound of feet flattening carpet fibers. i figured out how to click off my reading light silently (the trick was turning the knob counter clockwise), stash my book under the pillow and then roll over to face the wall feigning sleep. after the shadow in the doorway had lingered for a few seconds and then retreated to the living room, i would pull my book back out, heart pounding.

i was thinking about this a few nights ago, about how it felt when books and reading was a discovery, a new thrill. i am reading the girl with the dragon tattoo right now and it is the first time in a while that after shutting off the lights and trying to sleep that i can’t stop thinking about what is going to happen next and inevitably the lights go back on and i devour twenty more pages. at least now i don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for it with mom and dad.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]  Download

92y:

Jamaica Kincaid at the 92Y Poetry Center in January of 2009 reading from her short story Wingless and novel My Brother.

Download the MP3.

[92Y Literary Readings]

when you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.
that is what is wrong with cold people. not that they have ice in their souls—we all have a bit of that—but that they insist their every word and deed mirror that ice. they never learn the beauty or value of gesture. the emotional necessity. for them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. love is art, not truth. it’s like painting scenery.
late to the lorrie moore party.

i started reading self-help a few nights ago and oh my word i am in love.

look at what came in the mail; magic molly’s troubleshooting. you can buy your copy here.

look at what came in the mail; magic molly’s troubleshooting. you can buy your copy here.

of teen angst and an author's alienation

michiko kakutani explores j.d. salinger’s legacy of rendering the complexities of adolescence.