Hangovers

• Greg van Eekhout went to see Michael Chabon, who read not just a new piece, but two failed starts for it.
• Not Your Mother’s Bookclub (which just won a fabulous award, yay!) has an interview with M.T. Anderson about The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Vol. One: The Pox Party), as does Publishers Weekly. I just reread the book and will post about it soon, but, honestly, it’s completely and utterly amazing and you should just go read it. Stat.
• Liz Hand’s F&SF review of the Tiptree biography (which I’m finally getting around to reading) is now online. (Can’t remember where I saw this linked — so sorry!)
• Theresa Duncan on iPod iChing-ing, and a related Guardian piece. I do not believe my iPod is psychic.
• Guidelines for Night Shade’s anthology of pirate fiction, to be editeth by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, have been released.
• Dave Schwartz reviews The Science of Sleep.
• The completely addictive What Was That Book? Livejournal Community, where lots and lots of people have posted half-remembered plots (or something) about books they’d love to see again, sometimes for mysterious reasons. Interesting as an example of what readers remember, and what they forget. And most of the books are immediately identified! And most of them seem to be young adult and children’s books as well. Verrry interesting. And often funny.

• A list of words introduced to Noah Webster’s Compendious Dictionary of the English Language in 1806. Opossum! And skunk! And porcine!
• The Bold Type Scary issue is out.
• Austin Kleon on an Alison Bechdel appearance.
• Cynthia Leitich Smith talks with writer/editor Deborah Noyes.
• Maud Newton hosts a fascinating debate between Phil Campbell and Mike Daisey about truth and storytelling, jumping off Daisey’s new show dealing with J.T. Leroy and James Frey.
• A teen-made trailer for John Green’s Looking for Alaska.
• More Stephen King blitz in the NYT, which might be annoying if I didn’t find him so damn likable. And I’m very interested to read this one. I’m officially putting it on the scary reads for October list, which means I’ll pick it up the day it comes out and read read read.
• Veronica Mars numbers look okay, but not stellar. Someone on TWoP calculated that they held about 60 percent. So, all y’all, watch next week. No Standoff-ing!
• Editor Ellen Datlow gets profiled in the Columbus Dispatch.

• Loving the Anousheh Ansari space blog.
• Ben Rosenbaum stirs the machine consciousness pot.
• Sanitize everything in your hotel room. Or, the other reason you always get sick when you come home from a trip.
• Clarkesworld Magazine debuts with stories by Sarah Monette and Lavie Tidhar, both amazing writers.
• Maureen Johnson on the prom, continuing her series of posts on school daze hijinx.
• Marta Randall, the writer who has expressed irritation at being referred to as "Robert Silverberg’s girlfriend" in Julie Phillips’ Tiptree bio, has a very entertaining Web site. Especially check out The Gallery of Hideous Covers, in which she offers direct critiques of some of her novel covers.
• Scalzi was undeniably on a streak last week, but wanted to nod my head in agreement to his post on blogging and popularity:

  I also think that personal bloggers probably shouldn’t try to crack the Top 100. Personal blogs may have inherently fewer links and possibly fewer readers (which is not the same, incidentally, as I know for a fact that I more readers than some blogs on the Technorati Top 100), but this doesn’t make those blogs any less interesting. Speaking as a reader, I prefer reading blogs where a person goes all over the board on subjects, because as it turns out I read for the voice of blogger, not the topic.

  I would be very sad to see the diversity of personal blogs thin out because people thought they weren’t popular enough. The world really does have enough purely political blogs and tech blogs; there are never enough blogs that see the world from a personal point of view.

• To whet your appetite for the new Veronica Mars season: the transcript of a Rob Thomas and Tina Majorino (Mac) teleconference with bloggers. I’ve been avoiding TWoP and have seen nothing but the largest, most mainstream of spoilers. We’ll see how long that lasts.
• Winda Benedetti (what a great name) asks whether being obsessed with dead people is weird and goes to see one of those shellacked human form exhibits.
• Graham Sleight with some Geoff Ryman minutia. I am all about Ryman minutia.

After a lot of heatedness and some yellingness, the car situation may be resolved. For now. Why do I now not trust any auto shop on Earth? Anyway, on with the show:

• This will blow your mindlets: Seona Dancing.
• Sara Ryan on the pleasures of The Wire. (Which really is the best, most consistent drama on TV.)
• There’s just something about those Aussie authors; witness Rosie Little: "Fellatio," Rosie says, "could lead the uninitiated to envisage something ornate, baroque even — perhaps some sort of decorative globe, or a wrought-iron birdcage, encrusted with stiff black vine leaves."
• The huge summer-autumn double issue of Endicott Studio’s The Journal of Mythic Arts is now online and features more goodies than I can even touch on here. Check it out.
• Ursula Le Guin on Margaret Atwood’s latest collection of stories.
• A great LA Times piece on the retirement of a Delta librarian after 30 years; everyone who thinks librarians and libraries are important should read this. (Via Jeff.)
• An investigation into allegations of (more) cheating on Project Runway? Say it ain’t inconclusive.
• Laura Bush on dirty books, in which it is revealed that Jenna highlighted sections of Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty: "Jenna had read it and underlined it and it was very interesting to see what a 25-year-old would underline," she recounts. She found herself lingering, a literary voyeur, over a passage her daughter had highlighted. "It was about the way a girl felt about her father, so it was revealing in that way." She can’t remember it more specifically, Bush says, except "of course it was a loving line." Of course.
• The Happy Booker hosts Janis Cooke Newman, author of doorstopper Mary, with a short essay about the book and Mary Todd Lincoln’s white cake. I interviewed Janis for PW’s BookExpo newsletter and found her fabulous, witty and full of excellent MTL tidbits. I’m looking forward to tackling Mary at some point, but for now, I may just settle for MTL’s white cake recipe.
• Andrew Wheeler puts that troubling statistic that The Book Standard (and O.G. Jeremy Lassen!) sent out into the world into perspective: The exact quote is "93 percent of ISBNs sold fewer than 1,000 units in 2004, according to Nielsen BookScan." Now, he didn’t say the universe was of books published in 2004, but of ISBNs, which includes every book in print, and plenty of books that are now out of print (ISBNs have been standard worldwide since 1970). So what he’s actually saying is that, in this one given year, only 7% of all of the books published since 1970 moved more than 1000 units. This is not particularly controversial. Still, too many books out of print, people reading less fiction than I want them to!
• My own personal favorite story of the day: dueling magicians.

TV-slave peeps, I’m agonizing over whether to a) watch the Gilmore Girls premiere tomorrow night (I will, punishment meet glutton) and b) whether to even attempt a GGGossip Circle post (I probably will, for any other gluttons out there). Oh, sadness. Why, ASP? Why? Sigh.

I plan some actual real content here this week, including posts on Jeff VanderMeer’s Shriek (which I’m finding it hard to write about, but loved), David Levithan’s Wide Awake and Jennifer Egan’s The Keep. And in October, I’m going to profile at least one deliciously creepy read a week in honor of the season when everything dies and we dress up in costumes and get candy.

• The Book Standard rounds up a panel on the state of publishing, which cites a statistic that 7 percent of books published in 2004 sold more than 1,000 copies and accounted for 87 percent of total sales, with the remaining 93 percent of books selling fewer than 1,000 copies and making up 13 percent of total sales. Ouch. (Via Jeremy Lassen, King of Night Shade Books.)
• Book Nerd has Libba Bray’s Ode to Independent Booksellers.
• Rick Bowes has a shiny Web site to go along with his shiny story collection Streetcar Dreams and other midnight fancies from PS Publishing. Want.
• John Scalzi on hefty advances and books by bloggers.
• Happy Banned Books Week.
• How your brain knows whether I like you or not. (And vice versa.)
• So, do you think Heroes is worth watching for the bad bad baddity bad bad factor or is it just painfully bad?

Yeah, a week that was too busy even for little hangover posts; hope that never happens again. Some links collected over the week:

• The uberfabulous Doselle Young sent word of TV writer Kay Reindl’s excellent blog Seriocity. Don’t take my word for it though, take Doselle’s, which is a pretty good life rule, actually.
• Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier even podcast together.
• Apex Digest is running an emergency subscription drive to keep from closing its pages; there’s now a raffle. More details here.
• Midori Snyder posts word that writer Elif Shafak has been cleared. Turkish authorities had levied charges against her that could have resulted in three years in prison — for remarks made by a character in one of her books. (And congratulations to the Endicott Studio Blog for being a Typepad featured site!)
• A Washington Post piece on lonelygirl15, etc. (Via William Gibson.)
• Alan DeNiro has the two posts of the week, in my opinion: "On Writing a Novel Inefficiently" and "World Building in a Post-Geographic Age."
• Holly Black on how even good writing advice can be wrong.
• Liars! Rock! John Green and Justine gab about lying, on the occasion of the release of his wonderful An Abundance of Katherines. I intend to post a bit more about Katherines later this weekend.
• Maud Newton hosts a fascinating review by Walter Moore of Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary, by three senior editors of the OED.
• Pinky takes a look at The Black Dahlia adaptation, as a fan of the book. Apparently, first half good, second half not so.
• Greil Marcus on Twin Peaks. (Via the Rake.)
• Niall Harrison has read the Tiptree biography.
• Andrew Auseon comic book starring Andrew Auseon.
• Itzkoff’s latest SF column looks at the continuing flood of Dune books.
• I think that’s just about enough out of me for now. Let’s go see a flooded city.

• A list of the 20 best zombie movies of all time; while I agree on some counts, I can’t quite support this list. No Cemetery Man? No Dawn of the Dead remake (for the opening sequence ALONE)? (via Ed)
• Bookninja’s take on Rowling’s manuscript mayhem is hilarious.
• Words Margo Lanagan thinks you’d be better off not using, and the writers who love them.
• Stowaway viruses love babies. (via Jenny D)
• Sara Gran has some questions about the invisibility of many midlist and nonfamous black authors.
• Jeff VanderMeer offers a compelling early recommendation for Dan Simmons’ The Terror, out in January. Must read.

• Why was I not warned this would be a busy busy busy week? With NONSTOP DEPRESSING RAIN RAIN RAIN that makes Emma the Dog SAD SAD SAD. I should have been warned. Email. It exists. It is sitting there, I know, waiting oh so patiently to be answered. Those of you who’ve forgotten you sent something, expect an unexpected response oh … sometime.
• Dzanc Books. It is the buzz all over town. Very exciting — Dan Wickett’s third step (at least) in (literary) world domination. Plus, I think we should now call him Dzanc; it’s a catchy handle.
• Madonna in Russia brings about controversy. "This vulgar pop star is abusing Christian symbols" = simpler times. Comforting.
• Roald Dahl, celebrated.
• Elizabeth Bear on POV.
• Article on the Chinese SF scene. (Via Locus.)
• The fabulousest Erin Keane wrote a piece on Swedish food for New Southerner. With recipes!
• Pinky’s links today are the best in show. Just go there. Nothing more to see here.

• Swamped. No email yet. But seriously, it’s on the list. Will catch up on it this week.
• Peter Jackson options the Temeraire books; yay! (Thanks, Shana!)
• Alex Ross cuts 140,000 words from his novel. Ouch. (Via Ed.)
• Andy Duncan on shampoo and the culture of surveillance.
• Jeff VanderMeer interviewed at the BLDGBLOG. I can’t even tell you how much I loved Shriek. Will post more about it soon. For now: just read it.
• Diane Rehms interviews Jamie Lee Curtis about her new book and it’s a "can’t miss." (Via the Publishing Insider.)
• Callie Miller at Counterbalance recommends two books she loves that are not widely known: Martin Sloane by Michael Redhill and If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor. I hadn’t heard of either, but will definitely seek them out.
• A woman who is her own twin, DNA-wise. Whoa.

• I solemnly vow to answer all extant emails in the next 48 hours. Promise. I’m the rudest person in the world, I know.
• Remember that Onion AV Club review that tagged Jennifer Egan as a "known chick-lit author" (which sounds like "known child murderer" as a phrase)? Well, its writer stops by Darby’s comments to set the record straight; editors strike again.
• Sara Gran in the NYT on being one of many writers in Brooklyn.
• Unshelved does Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist.
• Adam Stemple shoots a handgun and writes it off as research.
• La Gringa hosts a plea for help from a resident of New Orleans.
• Scott Westerfeld’s The Last Days (one of those better than a sequel, sequel-type books, cousin to Peeps) is OUT OUT OUT. Go buy it. Then post in the spoiler thread.
• Jay at the Bodhisattva is getting very close to naming his top 10 (of 100) spec fic novels of the last 10 years; he weighs in with 11-20.