Friday: “My eyes slammed themselves capital O open…” Morning had come too soon. The previous evening, Thursday, Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts, read at Wordsmiths as part of the Baby Got Books Reading Series. The result: an incredible day an an evening that went fairly late for a school night, which resulted in at least one sleepy blogger who spent his Friday figuring out how to sneak in a nap. Here’s how it all went down:

Wordsmiths’ Russ and I picked up the author at the airport and immediately whisked him off to Little Five Points for burgers at The Vortex and a lap around Criminal Records. From L5P, we took it on down to Wordsmiths. Steven Hall and I had discussed these blog posts (1 and 2) from the Omnivoarcious blog in which authors discuss what beers best go with their books. He instantly replied “Amstel, of course”, because that’s what the characters in his book drink. However, we decided to collect additional data by ducking into the Brick Store Pub. If you’re keeping score at home, I spent most of Thursday going to my favorite places in Atlanta with one of my favorite authors and drinking beer. I’m still having a hard time believing that any of that actually happened - even after processing it all over the weekend. Eventually I had to take off to get ready for the evening and pick up Mrs. Got Books, etc.

Go time: Back at the store, Steven Hall began his reading with a selection from “Stories from a Phone Book”. Originally published as a short story in New Writing 13 , the piece will be included in a collection of stories that the author is working on now. The author then read several selections from The Raw Shark Texts, including part of this section that you can listen to Academy Award-winner Tilda Swinton read here. Following the reading, the author answered questions from the audience.

Steven Hall reads from Stories for a Phone Book

The evening’s Raw Shark moment: Just as the reading finished, a group of about 10-15 people walked through the front door all dressed in white shirts/blouses. They stood quietly and listened to the Q&A, then they filed out before the band started - without a word. Thanks for coming!

Following that bit of weirdness, Blue Screen Love Scene took to the stage while Steven Hall signed books and talked with the crowd. They opened with I Am a Scientist, my favorite BSLS tune, and finished strong with a cover of Siouxsie and The Banshees’ Hong Kong Garden (for you youngsters out there - that’s awesome).

Blue Screen Love Scene performs

While the band was playing and the author was signing books/chatting with the crowd, we continued the multi-tasking by celebrating BGB contributor Shaft’s 40th birthday. To mark the occasion, as well as the awesomeness of having Steven Hall in the house, Mrs. Got Books cooked up an amazing shark cake. I wish that I had had the presence of mind to get a picture of it when it was whole, but this is what it looked like after people had begun to dig in.

A partially devoured Raw Shark birthday cake

After BSLS wrapped up their set, the remaining crowd departed en masse for celebratory post event pints at the Brick Store. The mob quickly took over a large portion of the upstairs Belgian bar where everyone chatted with the author and enjoyed the company of other Raw Shark fans. A good time was had by all.

My hope is that our efforts will ensure that Mr. Hall will put Atlanta atop his list of cities to visit on his future book tours. Either way, it will surely be an event that those in attendance will be talking about for a long time. I know that I won’t be able to shut up about my day with Steven Hall for a long time.

Tonight!

Steven Hall

reads from

The Raw Shark Texts

w/ Special musical guests

Blue Screen Love Scene

@

Wordsmiths

***the fine print***

It’s Raw Shark Eve. We’re practically bouncing off the walls with anticipation of tomorrow’s festivities. Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts. Blue Screen Love Scene providers of ethereal dance pop. Refreshments. Free. @ Wordsmiths. 8PM. Be there.

So maybe you’re on the fence. You’re thinking about coming out, but you haven’t bought into the Thursday is the new Friday bit. OK. Here’s a roundup of links for you to explore the novel even further…

• No less a personage than Joyce Carol Oates explores “amnesia lit” and declares Raw Shark ““ingratiatingly literary”
• Academy Award-winner Tilda Swinton reads from Raw Shark (must click link)
• Find out what it all means with the Unspace Exploration Committee
• More clues at the Annotated Raw Shark wiki
• Raw Shark on Squidoo
• Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes with Steven Hall
• The Onion A/V club does the iPod random shuffle thing with Steven Hall

Raw Shark Week continues here at BGB as we celebrate this Thursday’s star-studded reading event. Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts, will be making his only Southeastern appearance at Volume 3 of the Baby Got Books Reading Series with musical guest Blue Screen Love Scene. The evening begins at 8PM at Wordsmiths Books in Decatur. All of the particulars can be found here. Join us.

We’ve written extensively about Steven Hall and The Raw Shark Texts here at BGB. For your convenience, I’ve collected some of the highlights together for your surfing pleasure.

• I review The Raw Shark Texts: “First things first. The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall will knock your socks off. Look at me. I’m totally sockless.”
• BGB’s Shaft reviews The Raw Shark Texts: “I wanted to shout loud and proud, for everyone to hear, how cool this book is.”
• BGB’s Weezie attends the author’s reading in San Francisco and files this report: “…I found it to be one of the most original, gripping, masterfully constructed, beautifully written books I’ve read in quite a long time. Hall has a gift for understanding and translating into words what it feels like to think and remember and dream and love and imagine.”
• I complain about the New York Times’ half-assed review.
• I interview Steven Hall: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
• I add an emergency addendum to my Favorite Books of 2007 after forgetting to include my favorite book of 2007.
• Weezie, Shaft, and Shortbus include The Raw Shark Texts in their lists of their favorite reads of 2007.

April 21-25.  Check your local listings.

The Penguin Books (UK) blog unveiled these cool new covers for Orwell’s classics 1984 and Animal Farm:

The covers are by the artist Shepard Fairey whose work I’ve always found interesting. The earliest pieces I remember coming across were mysterious stickers that were on telephone poles EVERYWHERE that featured the old-school wrestler Andre the Giant and the word “Obey”.

Fairey’s work borrows from propaganda, advertising/marketing, and popular culture. He’s a perfect fit for these two titles. I hope that these covers will make it to this side of the Atlantic. How lame is this?

Fairey’s work is often political - pointedly so. See if you can guess where the artist stands on these two politicians:

and

A collection of Shepard Fariey’s work has been published in the book Supply & Demand. I’ve been meaning to pick it up. Amazon says it is unavailable though.

Atlanta author Douglas Blackmon was reviewed in the NYT by Janet Maslin yesterday.  His new book, Slavery By Another Name, tells the overlooked story of how slavery continued in some parts of the South well past Emancipation and into the 20th century through the insidious practice of convict lease programs - with criminal conviction being a relatively loose and flexible condition.

Blackmon is the Chief of the Wall Street Journal’s Atlanta Bureau, and he lives in my neighborhood.  Do your part to support local writers.  You can catch him reading from the book next Tuesday at the Decatur Library.

Author Steven Hall has posted his upcoming US Tour dates. The important date, for the purposes of this post, is the last one. See if you can tell how that date is different from the rest…

Tuesday, April 15th
Ann Arbor MI
5:30pm—Borders Original Voice Awards Ceremony
31410 Lohr Road, Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Phone: 734.997.8884

Wednesday, April 16th
Birmingham MI
7:00pm—Borders
34300 Woodward
Birmingham, MI 48009
Phone: 248.203.0005

Thursday, April 17th
Westlake OH
7:00pm—Borders
Promenade of Westlake
30121 Detroit Road
Westlake, OH 44145

Friday, April 18th
San Diego CA
7:00pm—Borders
1072 Camino Del Rio N.
San Diego, CA 92108
Phone: 619.295.2201

Saturday, April 19th
Long Beach CA
2:00pm—Borders
Los Altos Market Center
2110 Bellflower Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90815
(562) 799-0486

Monday, April 21st
Sacramento CA
7:00pm—Borders
2339 Fair Oaks Boulevard
Sacramento, CA 95825
Phone: 916.564.0168

Tuesday, April 22nd
Portland ME
7:00pm—Borders
430 Gorham Rd.
South Portland, ME 04106
Phone: 207.775.6110

Wednesday, April 23rd
Boston MA
7:00pm— Borders
255 Grossman Drive
Braintree, MA 02184
Phone: 781-356-5111

Thursday, April 24th
Atlanta GA
8:00pm—Wordsmiths Books
545 N McDonough
Decatur, GA 30030
For more on this one, see www.babygotbooks.com

Thanks for the shout out! As you can see, the Baby Got Books Reading Series stop in Atlanta is Hall’s only visit to the Southeastern US and his only stop at an independent book store on this tour (which is fair - this tour is centered around receiving the Borders Original Voices Award)

This is an excellent excuse to post this again:

Poster by Jtrav

Pultizer-winning author Junot Díaz in a well-timed Newsweek interview weighs in on Bush, immigration hysteria, and Moby Dick:

You know, I love that image from “Moby Dick,” because we’re like the ship. We’re the Pequod. We’re this nation on this ship, and we’re on this insane quest being directed by a madman. But what’s really interesting is that Captain Ahab wasn’t taking his foreign workers and making them walk the plank. He understood the value of diversity through his dream. We’re even crazier than Ahab. We’re chasing this white whale called terrorism, but our captain is saying, “You know what, I don’t think some of us really belong here. They should walk the plank.” I never thought there would be a day where the United States would be crazier than its metaphor, the Pequod. But we’re there. We’re there. Ahab is now a moderate.

Hot off of the e-mail: I just received this sweet flyer that J Trav put together for the BGB Reading Series, Volume 3 (BGB3). J Trav is one half of the band Sealions and an excellent graphic designer. I love what he’s done here. You can’t tell at this resolution, but the text in the sharks is from a wikipedia-ish entry on sharks. That’s aweseme. Very meta. It fits in well with the book, too. Contact J Trav for all of your graphic design needs. Tell him BGB sent you.

All that you need to know about BGB 3 is on the poster, but you should also know that it will also be BGB contributor Shaft’s 40th birthday that very same night. (Appearance by Shaft not confirmed by his publicist as of press time.) Some prestigious local Book Awards are also being handed out at the Decatur Court House on the Square that wrap up just before we get started less than 50 yards away. The house may be getting a little full at the Wordsmiths is all we’re saying. Make you plans already.

Last night was the second event in the Baby Got Book Reading Series and the last night of Wordsmiths Books at the old post office building. About 50-60 hardy souls braved the unseasonably cold weather (there were snow flurries earlier in the day, for crying out loud) and hung around for over three hours on a Monday night. Zach, the owner of Wordsmiths, had to start turning off the light to make people go home. By all accounts, it was an amazing evening.

Hillary Jordan kicked things off with a reading from her novel, Mudbound. Claire from Hope for Agoldensummer described the novel thusly: “it’s tragic and it’s Southern - my two favorite things.” Amen, sister. After the reading, Jordan took several questions from the crowd, signed books, and hung out while the musicians prepared to do their thing.

The musical accoutrement included the coolest guitar rack ever, on which hung a saw that would later be used for musical purposes.

Wayne and Big Peaches of the Wayne Fishell Experience took the stage. While talking up the band’s local roots, Wayne pointed out that the WFX are “Decatur’s only gay acoustic duo.” That’s HIGH-larious if you know Decatur at all.

Hope for Agoldensummer closed out the evening with a spellbinding set. Their last song was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen performed live. I can’t even describe it. If you weren’t there, you’ll just have to suffer with the fact that you missed it. If there is ever an O Brother, Where Art Thou 2, rest assured that these ladies will be providing the bulk of the soundtrack. (And they played the saw.) See this band live in a non-rowdy setting ASAP.

Mark your calendars now. BGB3 goes down on April 24th. Much more to come on that one, so stay tuned.

And you’re invited.

Tonight at Wordsmiths Books — The Baby Got Books Reading Series, Volume 2 brings you:

Hillary Jordan reads from her brilliant Southern novel, Mudbound! (Read the BGB review.)

The Wayne Fishell Experience play acoustic indie pop!

Hope for Agoldensummer play haunting Southern/Appalachian blues-tinged Avant Americana! (or “junkyard soul” as they call it)

Wordsmiths celebrates its very last night in the “old post office” building before moving to the Square! (You can’t write on the walls or take sledge hammers to the dry wall - I asked.)

There will be food! There will be beverages!

It is all free!

That’s a lot of exclamation points for one evening. If those can’t entice you off of the couch on a Monday night, you may be beyond help.

More to come on the event…

In other Raw Shark Texts news:

In addition to winning the Borders Best New Voices Award for Fiction,  The Raw Shark Texts has been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Steven Hall reported on his blog yesterday that the screenplay for the RST movie is nearing completion.

We’re honored to announce that the Baby Got Books Reading Series, Volume 2 will be the very last event at Wordsmiths before they shut the doors and move down the street. Accordingly, we’ve got an excellent evening of Southern Culture (capital “S”, capital “C”) planned. The event is March 24th and kicks off at 7:30 PM. We hope to see you there.

Author Hillary Jordan will be reading from her Bellwether Prize-winning novel Mudbound. The prize was founded by Barbara Kingsolver to reward “books of conscience, social responsibility, and literary merit.” Jordan’s novel scores on all of these fronts. I’ll have a full review coming soon.

But wait…there’s more!

Following the readng, we have a full slate of excellent music. The Wayne Fishell Experiment will kick things off with acoustic-folk-indie-pop. They’re excellent and worth the price of admission alone.

Now how much would you pay?

Following The Wayne Fishell Experiment is Hope for Agoldensummer from Athens, Ga. Hope for Agoldensummer are tough to describe, but they would not be out of place on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack or the rural post World War II setting of rural Mississippi. And yet their sound is very moder. Rough Trade Records describes the band: “this is strange, soulful and deeply affecting stuff. think a rural Cocorosie, an ornate Cat Power or a female Arcade Fire.” I, for one, can’t wait to check them out.

All of this fun can be yours for the low price of $0. That’s a sweet, sweet deal my friends.

I’ll have more on the event in the weeks to come. Here are the relevant details:

The Georgia Center for the Book is hosting an event with Charlie Cobb tonight. Cobb is the author of a magnificent new travel guide to the American civil rights movement, On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail. What makes this book special, in addition to Cobb’s great writing, is his own insider history as one of the unsung heroes of that movement.

Cobb was a student at Howard University when he was drawn into the black freedom struggle. He ended up taking a few years off from his studies in the early and mid-1960s to organize rural blacks and register voters in the Mississippi Delta. His analysis of the situation African Americans faced in that part of the world helped convince the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (the group with which he was affiliated) to invite privileged white students into the state as volunteers for the monumental Freedom Summer project.

Cobb was the first to suggest the creation of the Freedom Schools, the parallel institution that taught a value system diametrically opposed to the one taught in Mississippi’s segregated public schools. The Freedom Schools were the enduring legacy of the Mississippi movement and only the most important development in American public education in the last half of the 20th century. But you won’t learn too much about the Freedom Schools, or about Cobb, from most American history books. (There are some exceptions: He has written about his story here, and a few historians of the Mississippi Movement, like this one have written about his organizing in some detail.)

The Georgia Center for the Book couldn’t be easier to find or get to. It’s in the Decatur Public Library, one block off the square and one block from the MARTA station. Tonight’s event features a great writer AND a significant historical figure. Two for the price of one!

Salman Rushdie lectured at Emory University on Sunday night.  I missed it, but the AJC ran this recap:

You needn’t have read his novels, or heard him speak, to have formed an impression of celebrated author Salman Rushdie… “I guess on a superficial level I expected him to be stoic and severe,” said Atlanta resident Jocelyn Kilbrin, one of about 1,100 people who on Sunday attended Rushdie’s lecture, “Autobiography and the Novel,” at Emory University… As Kilbrin observed after his speech, he defied her expectations, delivering a literary and cultural treatise well-informed by his own experience as a marked man.

The only person interviewed in the story has never read Rushdie, but she was surprised that he delivered a “literary” and “well-informed” treatise.  Huh.

HarperCollins has announced plans to give away e-book versions of selected titles in an effort to goose sales of the paper kind.  I’m not too excited about the titles that they’ve announced so far.  However, I am excited to see that author Neil Gaiman will soon be offering one of his books as a free e-book as part of the plan.  Gaiman has posted a selection of his titles on his blog to allow fans a chance to vote for which book will made available for free.  I’m voting for American Gods, which has a slight lead at the moment.

I ran down to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD-Atlanta) to catch Art Spiegelman lecture on Tuesday night. I’d wow you with the pictures, but photography was forbidden. Originally slated for a 70 minute talk, the lecture ended up lasting almost two hours. No one (with the exception of an elderly couple sitting next to me) was complaining. It was excellent evening that appears to have been well received by the 300-500 people present.

Spiegelman gave a lecture that he said was a mixture of his “Comics 101″ and “Forbidden Images” lectures, plus whatever else popped into his head. Comics 101 is an introduction to the history of the art form (SCAD offers a cartooning major that it calls “Sequential Art”).

The Forbidden Images part of the lecture was the result of Spiegelman’s response to the Mohammad cartoon riots from last year, which was featured in his much discussed essay “Drawing Blood” that appeared in Harper’s. Spiegelman thought that it spoke volumes that the only part of the cover that he designed for the issue (below) that sparked any controversy was the naked woman at the bottom left. She had to be covered up for the magazine to be sold in Canada.

The lecture was delightfully meandering, and Spiegelman had opinions on just about everything. Do go see him if he comes to a town near you. If you ever want to feel like a loser, run down to your local art school. They’re all pretty deep over there and ridiculously hip. Actual directions to the men’s room: “See those two guys over there drawing the hallway? Go down that hallway, and it’s on the left.”

So, how did the first evening in the Baby Got Books Reading Series go? Pretty well, I’d say. The place was packed, Wordsmiths sold out of Rob Sheffield’s book, the reading was excellent, the band was great — it was a pretty amazing evening all around.

Wordsmiths’ new ad campaign

Rob Sheffield arrived at Wordsmiths about half an hour before the reading, which was enough time to get some shopping done. The hot item of the night was an USB drive with an old school casette case package for making a 21st century mix tape. Lillian brought them over from Criminal Records. Rob bought one. (See Beth’s post about the evening for a picture of what I’m talking about.)

Sheffield explains the mysteries of Ton Loc

The actual event part of the evening began when Wordsmiths’ Russ welcomed everyone and introduced — me. I got to introduce Rob Sheffield, which was pretty cool. The review that I got for my intro was “rambling…but in a good way.” Wikipedia mentions, for some reason, that Sheffield is 6′5″. That seems about right to me. That guy is TALL. Anyway…

Sheffield read from two sections of the book that were about equally hilarious. (”Sheena was a Man” and “Roller Boogie” if you want to follow along at home). I had forgotten how funny parts of the book were and was charmed all over again. Listening to Sheffield be a Pip while reading lyrics to Gladys Night and the Pips “Midnight Train to Georgia” was worth the price of admission alone.

3 out of 4 Swears

After the reading, The Swear took to the stage and brought the rock. The acoustics are fantastic in the store, and the band sounded great. As if by design, the band’s set ended almost exactly when the line to get books signed was nearing its end.

Me and the Sheff

There was an impressive showing by the blogerati. Among those present: Beth from Cup of Coffey, Paul of The Yellow Stereo, Lain and Amelia from The Wren’s Nest, Lillian from Criminal Records, Kim at Eskimo Bliss — am I forgetting anyone?

Thanks to everyone for coming out last night. I think that everyone had a great time. At least I did. I think that the powers that be will let us have a Second in the Series. The bar has been set pretty high, but we’ll do our best to achieve the same level of awesome next time around. Stay tuned for that.

The Baby Got Books reading Series ft. Rob Sheffield & The Swear has been highlighted as the thing to do tomorrow night by Atlanta weekly Creative Loafing. They also call us “bookworm bloggers.”

Meanwhile, our daily paper’s book blog gets the details right but forgets to mention us, all while dissing the name of the book.

In case you missed it:

Directions