Fine Sentiment

I picked up this happening refrigerator magnet last week while visiting Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville, NC, which is a bookstore we love.

Maurice Sendak on Colbert

Steven Colbert visits Maurice Sendak. Awesomeness ensues. Sadly I can’t embed the clips, so you’ll have to go check it out at Comedy Central. (thanks for the heads up, Anne!)

Part 1

Part 2

This just in

Last week, while the weather was still nice here in Atlanta, I took a walk during my lunch break. I made my way over to Woodruff Park and found a table to read in the sun for a while. It was only on my way back to the office that I noticed that I had wondered into Woodruff Park’s Outdoor Reading Room.

There are carrels with books and magazines for borrowing/browsing, nice Woodruff Park branded umbrellas, etc.  When did this happen?  The Downtown Atlanta Improvement District has the scoop on this wonderful new addition:

The Woodruff Park Reading Room is an open-air reading room in northern portion of Woodruff Park. In partnership with the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, carts are stocked with a selection of books, periodicals and newspapers, with readings and programs at lunchtime. Movable furniture creates an intimate environment. The programming, publications, and environment of the Reading Room are available to everyone for free, without any need of cards or identification.

See the link above for info on donating books.  This is completely awesome and I had no idea it was there, despite working just a few blocks away.  It appears that I’ll have to wait a while for lunch time weather to improve to visit again.

On the Twitter: Indie Rock Novels

Again: we love when music and books collide. Naturally, we were suckers for the Twitter meme #indierocknovels.  They are almost universally awesome and chuckles abound.  These are some of my favorites:

• Neutral Milk Hotel New Hampshire (@georgina_gustin)
• The Pains of Being Pure at Heart of Darkness (@michaelarria)
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxie 500 (@robot_nation)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Arcade Fire (@GrandCentralPub)
• Are You There, Godspeed You Black Emperor? It’s me, Margaret. (@maggieserota)
• Go Tell It on the Mountain Goats (@michaelschaub)
• The Dead Milkmen Always Rings Twice (@red_lemonade)
• The Wind-Up Andrew Bird Chronicle (@The_Millions)
• Consider the Rock Lobster (@funkyfest)
• Modest Maus (@DriverContainer)
• The Old Man and the Sea and Cake  (@bryanhadley)

I wasted so much time reading through these, that I didn’t even try to come up with my own.  Suggestions?  Share them in the comments or post on Twitter with the hashtag #indierocknovels.

It’s Henry’s World

Author, musician, and now, photographer Henry Rollins has a new book of photography and essays centered on his travels to areas of conflict around the world called Occupants.  Over the past few days, I’ve come across a convergence of Rollins.  That’s a good thing.

Samples of the photographs with commentary by Rollins are featured on Wired.

Rollins is interviewed at Bookslut, which features some interesting commentary on book publishing.

And my personal favorite: The video for Wild Flag’s Romance features the ladies of the band reading Rollins’s tour memoir Get in the Van to the elderly.

Decatur Book Festival is here!

The Decatur Book Festival gets underway tomorrow evening with the keynote address by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, the husband/wife author/illustrator team behind the brand new book Wildwood.  I’m there.

Other personal highlights of the weekend fest include:

• Chris Adrian reading
• Multiple appearances by friend-of-the blog Collin Kelley
• Author George Pellecanos
• Tom Perotta
• Owly creator Andy Runton
• Swamplandia’s Karen Russell
• Geek Dad’s Tom Vandermeer
• Amy Waldman
• the Out of Print t-shirt booth
• Performances by The Theatrical Outfit AND the Atlanta Opera
• The always amazing Dust to Digital booth
• Picking up the latest publications by cool kid authors at the Wren’s Nest Table

There will probably be some food and drinks thrown in there, too.  Check out the full schedule, and I’ll see you there.

Space Oddity. For kids.

David Bowie’s Space Oddity imagined as a children’s book.  A very disturbing children’s book.  Download it for free from the artist, Andrew Kolb.

And, just because, Space Oddity in Italian.

Want.

Do I skateboard often?  No.  Do I need one of these sweet skate decks from Penguin USA?  Yes.  Definitely.  Especially the Hucklerry Finn on the left.  Check out a larger pic and how to win one here.  I’ve inquired for info on where I can just plunk down my hard-earned to walk away with one.  No answer yet.

Lucky Peach

I got my hands on Lucky Peach yesterday afternoon.  It’s the new food magazine put out by Momofuku’s David Chang and McSweeney’s. I’ve never been to Momofuku, but I make attempts to cook things in Chang’s cookbook.  I’m loving Chang’s appearances on Treme, and McSweeney’s has been on a do-no-wrong streak.  The mag just jumped into my mitts.  The cashier took it to ring me up, looked at the cover, did a spit take, and then said, “what am i looking at?” (That’s more than 1 chicken.)

I’m not a big food magazine reader, but Lucky Peach is not your typical food magazine. It’s got food inspired art, a short story, food history, John T Edge, Anthony Bourdain, and on and on. Oh, and some recipes.  This issue is dedicated to ramen.  There are no ads for kitchen stuff or anything else. It looks to be pretty remarkable from the little I’ve been able to read through so far. There is a good chance that I’ll read this cover-to-cover.  I’ve never done that with a food magazine and very rarely with any other kind of magazine.

Holy f***ing smokes

One charming @#~%*! children’s book!

(and it’s FREE)

(and now available for listening/forwarding as unexciting YouTube clip)

1, 2, 3 Sew

My friend, Ellen Baker, has been writing about and creating beautiful crafts and projects for children and adults on her blog The Long Thread for several years.  She recently became a contributor on another blog, Alpha Mom as well.  I’m not such a great crafter myself, but I love checking out what she comes up with as well as her links to other sites.  And I have definitely borrowed some of her ideas for hand made gifts, birthday celebrations, and simple holiday decorations.

Over the last year or two, Ellen has taken that blog thing to the next level and written a book.  It’s called 1, 2, 3 Sew: Build Your Skills With 33 Simple Projects, and it’s beautiful!  I have watched the progress of her book on The Long Thread and am very excited that it’s ready to go.  In fact, I have already purchased my copy and picked up an extra for Grammy (who actually can sew).  Check out the blog and the book trailer.  It’s wonderful.  And then go ahead a get your own copy of 1,2,3 Sew.  It’s pretty inspiring.

Matilda rejects the iSwindle

Please run, don’t walk, to check out Unshelved’s brilliant cartoon take on Roald Dahl’s Matilda as a young reader with an evil, electronics-obsessed father.

Tournament of Books Bracket

The 2011 Tournament of Books is almost upon us.  The brackets have been published and are the most stylish yet.

This version is impossible to read, of course. Go here to check out the real deal.  I’ll post my completed brackets prior to tipoff, but I’ll let you know now that I’m picking Skippy Dies to take the crown.

Bookstores we love: Sundog

Whenever I’m in the Florida panhandle, a stop is going to be made at Seaside’s Sundog Books if at all possible.  I love everything about this place.  The entire right half of the store is given over to fiction and the books are loosely arranged by categories that you aren’t going to see in chain stores, like “international fiction”, “contemporary fiction”, “historical fiction”, etc.

And as I recently found out, they’ve given up trying to arrange the books alphabetically by either author or title.  The books just find a home on the shelves in the general neighborhood of where they might find themselves in a more rigorous classification system.   The store demands browsing!  On my visit, I could not find Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! in any of the places that I thought to look.  It occurred to me that they might have sold out, this being Florida.  I finally asked and was directed to the lone remaining copy in “Southern fiction.”  Of course!

The staff recommendations section is especially strong, and it was a little spooky to discover that “Bob” and I have read almost all of the same books over the last year and a half.   It turns out that Bob is the owner.  Unfortunately, he was not in.  I’ll have to make another trip to congratulate him on his excellent recommendations and running a first rate bookstore.

Neko Case = Awesome

We love Neko Case in general, but we love her even more after learning that the singer is raffling off the car featured in the world’s greatest album cover to benefit 826 National.

Update: Fixed the link.

Oh, snap!

Are the kids still saying that?  If so, this event at Atlanta’s Wren’s Nest is eminently oh-snap-able.  If not, um…I meant it ironically.

I’m very excited about this.   Many of my favorite ATL writers.  A band called Book Club.  I’ve said for years that the Wren’s Nest would be a fantastic venue for this sort of thing. Ask anybody.  Brought to you by PurgeATL.

My Ideal Bookshelf

Some time ago, I wrote about one of the coolest things EVER.   I was pretty sure that artist Jane Mount’s Ideal Bookshelf project was one of the greatest things I’d ever seen.  Ms. Mount paints incredible custom portraits of your favorite books.   Each painting is one of a kind and necessarily meaningful to the owner.

As it turns out, my mom reads the blog and thought a Jane Mount ideal bookshelf painting would make a great present.  She went back through the archives and highlighted books that I that I’ve gone on and on about over the years here at BGB.   Along the way, my wife was surreptitiously photographing book spines and e-mailing the pictures out to make sure everything looked just right.  Working with Ms. Mount they came up with an Ideal BGB Bookshelf.  Check it out:

This is just a scan resized to fit here.  The original is on 8 1/2 x 11″ on fancy art paper and is pretty fantastic. The books on the shelf are (from left to right):

• All Other Nights by Dara Horn
• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
• Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
• Consumption by Kevin Patterson
• The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
• What is the What by Dave Eggers
• Special Topics in Calamity Phsyics by Marissa Pessl
• Just Kids by Patti Smith
• The Wild Things by Dave Eggers
• The Brief and Wondrous Life  of  Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• A Heartwarming Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
• Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
• Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
• The Longshot by Katie Kitamura
• King Dork by Frank Portman

That’s an excellent cross section of my recent enthusiasms and a stellar gift.  InStyle Magazine is recommending an Ideal Bookshelf for your Valentine’s Day needs.

But wait, there’s more.  I also received a stand alone painting of the children’s book Frederick by Leo Lionni, which is pretty fantastic, too. I think Frederick the mouse would like that it’s on its own.

Patti Smith on Colbert

The Moth in the ATL

Are you a fan of the story-telling project/phenomemon The Moth?  If you answered yes and live in Atlanta, you need to cancel whatever plans you thought you had on Thursday October 28 and Friday October 29 and get on out to Manuel’s Tavern.  Moth founder, and St. Simons native, George Dawes Green has been crossing the state with Moth veterans in support of indie bookstores and story-telling. They’re calling it the The Unchained Tour:

We’re painting up an old bus, and this October five brilliant mad Moth raconteurs—along with fiddlers and a circus act—will be riding to fourteen Georgia towns to tell stories and play music and perform. We’ll visit locales where there are still independent booksellers. We’ll ask our audiences to join the pledge that henceforth, whenever possible, they’ll buy their books only from independent bookstores.  We’re inviting folks to come celebrate the purest arts: handmade music and the voice of the raconteur and the incandescence of great literature. To come celebrate in the company of their neighbors. On lovely autumn nights in Georgia.

Thursday and Friday nights are the final nights of this very cool project.  Don’t miss it!

Books as healthy lifestyle choice

I saw this ad for a wellness campaign on the side of a bus this morning:

If you can’t make out what’s happening at this poor resolution, “thrive” is spelled out in opened and stacked books and the the accompanying text says, “because there’s nothing good on tv.”  Nice.