I’ve been reading this book in huge gulps all weekend, and despite all of the visceral descriptions of bruises and blood and blisters and bears and really terrible things happening to toenails, all I keep thinking is: Fuck, I want to do that someday. But probably with a gun.
More like Simon Van Dreamboat
So, you know Simon Van Booy? The adorable creature featured in the video I put up a few posts back? I was innocently checking my mailbox at work the other day, and I found a beautiful little note from him thanking me for a review I wrote of Everything Beautiful Began After.
Oh yeah, I was all aflutter. I am still afluttering at the thought of it. My afluttering probably caused a hurricane somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Sorry about that.
Without a doubt, this is our favorite freewheeling photograph of the late, great Christopher Hitchens, whose passing we can barely comprehend. So we turn to the words of Graydon Carter, who writes of this image in his touching memoriam:
“I once sent him out on a mission to break the most niggling laws still on the books in New York City. One such decree forbade riding a bicycle with your feet off the pedals. The photograph that ran with the column, of Christopher sailing a small bike through Central Park with his legs in the air, looked like something out of the Moscow Circus.”
Photograph by Christian Witkin.
(via npr)
If you aren’t moved to go out and buy his novel as soon as you’re done watching this, you need to resign from the human race. I’m not backing down on this one.
agreed!
If you didn’t already adore Simon Van Booy, oh, you will now. Watch this charming interview, and buy his novel, Everything Beautiful Began After.
——
OliveTV: Okay, so, if you could pretend to be someone else, who would you want to be?
Simon Van Booy: That’s such a good question.
O: You gotta stop saying that after every question.
SVB: (Nods) I’m sorry. If I could be someone else… I think I would be… a… a… a gardener at a public school, who looks after all the kids whose parents aren’t really interested in bringing them up. And so, children leave the school knowing everything about flowers. And then… Actually, I think I’d be James Bond.
As someone who works as an event host at an indie bookstore, can I just say how much I adore John Green and how many of his babies I would willingly gestate? I don’t even care if that last part went a bit too far, because honestly, I’ve had some wine recently. Very recently. And really and truly, that’s how much I love this post:
The one in Boston requires that you pre-order TFIOS from them?! But I ALREADY preordered TFIOS. I realize what they’re trying to do, but I still call unfairness.
All of them require you preorder TFiOS (or almost all, anyway). This is because it is expensive for bookstores to put on these events, and bookstores are fighting hard to survive, and we don’t want to hurt places we love by making them lose money hosting nerdfighter tour events. So from your perspective, it’s unfair that they make you buy a book, but from their perspective, it’s unfair for you to come to an event at a place they rented out with a book you bought somewhere else.
There are a few ways you can proceed:
1. You can imagine that tickets cost $18, which is not unreasonable for a concert, and that with your ticket comes a free signed & Hanklerfished book, a poster, a fancy program with nerdfighter crossword puzzles, and a really nice evening.
2. You can cancel your preorder and re-preorder it from the store, thereby costing yourself nothing (or very little, anyway).
3. You can use your second copy of TFiOS to give to a friend who does not know that I signed the entire first printing, and your friend will feel very special that you got him/her a signed book, thereby deepening your friendship and who knows maybe love will blossom and you will get married and it will all be because you came to a nerdfighter gathering and you can invite us to your wedding and I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?
This is almost exactly what I see every evening when I try to read before bed.
BEST NEW BLOG.
Isaac is not impressed by the trite story of a struggling twenty-three year old poet jerkin’ around NYC’s East Side in Arthur Nersesian’s The Fuck Up. His momma is not impressed by his judgmental attitude.
(submitted by mockswithoutsocks)
