Is It Friday Yet?

It is? Sweet. Here are some things to read over the weekend.

• Maud Newton recommends catching up on your Kate Christensen backlist before the release of her new book Trouble (due out in June). I probably don't even have to say this at this point, but I concur.

• It's clearly "Blog About Our Favorite People Day," so with that in mind, I found this post by Julie Klam about her role as a recess monitor both hilarious and quite touching. Just like her book.
  

• Nobody seems to want to talk about Cory Doctorow's Little Brother with me, so I may just have to write a long blog post about it. Expect that sometime next week.

• Larry Wilmore, The Daily Show's "Senior Black Correspondent," will be at Vroman's next week supporting his book I'd Rather We Got the Casinos, and judging from this Pasadena Weekly interview, he's psyched: "I’ve always been in love with Pasadena since I was a kid. I didn’t grow up here, but a couple of grandmas lived here, my dad and his dad too. I always wanted to live here and I finally moved here in 1997." We're happy you're here, Larry, and we can't wait to host your event.

Have a great weekend. Stay dry, Los Angeles!

More Web Articles of Note

I think this Internet thing is going to catch on in a big, big way this year. It's really going to take off. Look what I found there today:

• Beatrice on the cover art for a limited edition of the new Dan Simmons novel Drood:

  It’s the Victorian-askew look of the latter that came to mind this morning when I got a look at Picacio’s artwork for a limited edition of Drood, the new Dan Simmons novel that asks the question, “Did the famous and loveable and honourable Charles Dickens plot to murder an innocent person and dissolve away his flesh in a pit of caustic lime and secretly inter what was left of him, mere bones and a skull, in the crypt of an ancient cathedral that was an important part of Dicken’s own childhood?”

  Dan Simmons will be at Vroman's on February 22 to sign copies of Drood.

• Sarah Weinman, who is a terrific Twitterer (or tweeter or whatever), read 462 books last year. You thought you were so mighty with your 35. Loser.
  

• Norah Vincent, who will be at Vroman's next Thursday, is the guest for the newest Bat Segundo podcast.
  

• Ariel Swartley reviews two books by authors visiting Vroman's this month - Nancy Spiller's Entertaining Disasters (she was here last night, and was very cool) and Charlie Huston's The Mystic Arts of Removing All Signs of Death in Los Angeles magazine.

• As if bookselling weren't tough enough already, the new Child Safety Act has vague and potentially catastrophic implications for children's publishing. This is the law that was passed in response to the recalls of Chinese-made toys that contained lead. Right. So instead of, I don't know, buying more locally made toys (maybe even handmade toys) or rethinking the value of outsourcing toy production, we instead pass a bunch of restrictions with broad-strokes implications on all sorts of industries that weren't at fault to begin with. Won't someone please think of the children's booksellers!

• On a happier note, the excellent Inkwell Bookstore blog features this priceless artifact of 1990s culture: The Kids in the Hall Dr. Suess Bible.

• And finally Maud Newton just pointed out that the city of New York has passed budget cuts to nullify arts grants that were awarded but not paid. The city still found enough money to pay the Yankees $370 million for their new stadium. The same Yankees who just spent a cool $450 million on three players.
  

News and Notes

The store is packed with bargain hunters getting next year's Christmas and Hanukkah goods, and I'm in the office, contemplating when it's acceptable to start drinking afternoon coffee. Like for instance, do I have to wait until the afternoon? It's cold here, and that's fueling my desire for something warm. Here are some things to discuss while I brew a pot:

• Harold Pinter, playwright, anti-Iraq war activist, and Nobel laureate, has passed away.

• Eartha Kitt, signer, actress, and author, has passed away. In addition to playing Catwoman on the 1960s TV series "Batman," Kitt held the strangest book signing I've ever seen. It involved little people, a limousine, and a lot of alcohol. Publicists, sales reps, booksellers, and readers still talk about it to this day.

• All about Benjamin Button.

• Amanda Fortini at Slate.com on the new book Smogtown, a history of LA's pollution problem. We're hosting the authors of this book on Saturday, January 10.
  

Take Note

It's Friday morning, and I've just had a large coffee and a bagel/egg/sausage/cheese breakfast sandwich, so of course I have some things to tell you:

• The Inside Flap, the terrific blog of the venerable Milwaukee indie Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, has started this series of video shelf talkers. I love this idea, as it gives you a feel for what it's like to be in their store, meeting their staff. More indie bookstores should be doing more stuff like this (which basically means I should be doing more stuff like that).

• Michael Ruhlman posts today about Eric Ripert's new book On the Line. He also recommends Ripert's website aveceric. Funny thing is, we've got an event Monday afternoon: Lunch with Chef Eric Ripert (You've got about half an hour to sign up if you want to go).
  

• While further exploring tumblr, I came upon 52Books: A year long reading project. A simple concept, beautifully executed. Too bad I'm finding it at the tail end of the year.
  

• This has absolutely nothing to do with books (at least, not that I can tell) but it does have to do with greatness, and as such, I think everyone should read Unremitting Failure as soon as they have the time. On Sammy Hagar:

  People Talk a Lot About the Greatness of Sammy Hagar
  
  But seriously, of what does this much-vaunted greatness consist?
  
  One thing: Sammy can't drive 55.
  
  To which we say, so what? The speed limit has been upped to 65 mph in most places anyway. In fact, 32 states have raised speed limits to 70 mph or higher on some portion of their roadway systems. As a result, Mr. Hagar is no longer obligated to do that which he simply cannot do, mainly abide by a speed limit which everybody ignored right along with him in the first place.

• There goes the rest of the day: 50 years of Pelican paperback covers at Things Magazine. (Via the invaluable The Morning News.)
  

Pasadena Announces One City One Story for 2009

Pasadena has announced its choice for 2009 One City One Story. This year's book will be Luis Alberto Urrea's novel The Hummingbird's Daughter. According to Publishers Weekly:

"[Urrea] fashions an astonishing novel set against the guerrilla violence of post–Civil War southwestern border disputes and incipient revolution. His brilliant prose is saturated with the cadences and insights of Latin-American magical realism and tempered by his exacting reporter's eye and extensive historical investigation. The book is wildly romantic, sweeping in its effect, employing the techniques of Catholic hagiography, Western fairy tale, Indian legend and everyday family folklore against the gritty historical realities of war, poverty, prejudice, lawlessness, torture and genocide. Urrea effortlessly links Teresita's supernatural calling to the turmoil of the times, concealing substantial intellectual content behind effervescent storytelling and considerable humor."

I think it's nice to see the city recognize its rich Latino heritage, although I haven't read the book yet. What do people think of the choice? Has anybody read it already? Who's planning to?

According to the Pasadena Star News, Urrea will give a reading at the new Pasadena Convention Center on April 5.

Because There Will Be a Tomorrow

Vroman's will be hosting an event tomorrow evening. Yes, there is life after the election. We'll be screening the documentary film Paperback Dreams, a movie about two Northern California independent bookstores Cody's and Kepler's. Paperback Dreams recently aired on PBS, and we are lucky enough to have the filmmaker, Alex Beckstead, with us to discuss it.

Alex will be moderating a panel discussion on the state of independent bookselling in Los Angeles. The panel will feature Tyson Cornell of Book Soup, Emily Pullen of Skylight, and, um, me. If you're in the area, we would love to see you. Stop by the store and take part in the conversation.

Wednesday, November 5, 6 pm


Paperback Dreams Trailer from abeckstead on Vimeo.

Spend Halloween with Ray Bradbury

This morning when I checked my Google Reader page, I discovered this post on the Guardian Book Blog about Halloween-related fiction:

There's horror in Bradbury's stories - why else would I be recommending him for Halloween? - but it's not the horror of blood and gore. It's the horror of ringing telephones, the horror of the realisation that something inside you - a growing baby, perhaps, or a collection of bones - is alien and disturbing, the horror of a world where simply walking aimlessly through the dark night is something suspicious and possibly illegal.

The title of that post was "Spend Halloween with Ray Bradbury," which you can literally do at Vroman's Bookstore. Mr. Bradbury will be here tomorrow at noon to sign hardcover copies of his books. Stop by if you're in the neighborhood.

Back in Beige

I'm back from my three-day soujourn to the Governor's Conference on Women, where I helped host author signings with the likes of Rachel Ray, Rocco DiSpirito, Jenny McCarthy, and Madeleine Albright. I'm very, very tired, so you'll forgive me if this post is brief. A few things to check out while I soak in a hot tub:

• Narrative Magazine has a new short story by Stuart Dybek available online (You have to sign up to read it, but it is free).

• The Times' Paper Cut blog has a playlist by Todd Hasak-Lowy, who will be appearing at Vroman's on November 11 to discuss and sign his new book Captives.

• Everybody in the world has already linked to this, so I should too: Rolling Stone has a lengthy profile of the last days of David Foster Wallace.

• A few of us here at Vroman's are huge Mad Men fans (It's clearly Originality Day here at the bookstore), and awhile back we were talking about putting together a Mad Men display of books that seemed in a similar vein to the show. The first book that popped into my head was The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, but the second was Revolutionary Road. Turns out I was right (via The Morning News).
  

Guest Post: Jennie Shortridge on Love and Marriage

Seattle author Jennie Shortridge will be at Vroman’s Sunday, October 19 at 5 p.m. to read from and discuss her latest novel, Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe, quickly becoming a book club favorite. Called “smart, funny, and wise,” by author Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain) it’s the story of middle-aged Mira’s journey from perfect to better when she flees her “perfect” life and lands in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, known as “The Center of the Universe,” to begin life anew.

Jennie writes about the biology of love and marriage here:
___________________________________________

Little did I know when I wrote Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe that by re-imagining the age-old story of the runaway wife, I might tap the zeitgeist of that elusive fifty percent: the American married. And not just the female contingent. As I write this, nearly half of the customer reviews for the book on Amazon are from men.

For the past few months promoting this book, I’ve talked to hundreds of readers at book stores and events, phoned in to book club meetings across the country, and participated in numerous blog events out in cyberspace. Through all of that, I’ve been fascinated to discover that we’re all asking the same questions about the state of long-term marriage and the lack of passion that can plague it—or worse, sound the alarm or death knell of something we once thought sacred and forever.

The following Q&A is presented with these caveats: I am no expert in marriage or psychology, and I hold no degrees nor am I a licensed anything. However, my husband and I have been together for nineteen years. I have been both the dumper and the dumpee in relationships. I read voraciously about the biology of love, the science of romance and dating and mating. And like Paul Simon says in a song of the same title, “Maybe I think too much.”

An imaginary conversation, then, performed in both parts by me:

JS1: Where does all the romance go after we’ve been married a while, and will it ever come back?

JS2: In the book, Mira is a science teacher and considers love from a biological standpoint as a way of coping. For we lay people, understanding the biological underpinnings of human love and romance can help us gain clarity and achieve a better comfort level around the inevitable changes in marriage.

When first we fall in love, chemicals flow through our brains that make us feel euphoric, aroused, and attractive, and like the only one on earth who has ever felt this way with another person. It’s the same chemical that drives addiction. It’s the same chemical that is released when we eat chocolate. Why? So we will fulfill our biological imperative and mate with another human. That’s it. From the body’s perspective, it’s not about finding our soul mate, but about replacing ourselves on earth so our species will survive.

Once we have fulfilled that obligation, or enough time has passed to do that—say a year to a year-and-a-half—the passion chemical is replaced by a bonding chemical that encourages us to stay together long enough to raise the offspring to physical viability—say seven years old (the dreaded seven-year itch). And yes, it applies even if we don’t have children.

At that point, the partnership is no longer required, biologically speaking, and things can get dicey. That’s when we must become our most human selves and not act and react from an unthinking and solely biological place. That’s when it gets more difficult to be romantic and kind with our partners, but we have to if we want to build life-long love and respect (and fingers crossed, passion) inside our relationships.

JS1: How do you get the old zip-zang-doodle back in a marriage?

JS2: There’s a reason why they say marriage takes work. It’s not the bills or the kids or the countless other obligations that are the hard work. It’s staying passionate and in love and respectful through all of those things that is the challenge. That’s what happens to Mira and her husband Parker. They forget to keep talking; they retreat within themselves. They forget how to be in love.

Personally, I think it’s the small kindnesses, and the reciprocation of them, that help two people stay in love. Or if they’ve disappeared of late, the reintroduction of them that can bring excitement and connection back. The “I love yous” and kisses hello and goodbye, the shoulder rubbing after a hard day, the time we take away from everything else to just talk to our partners and try to really understand what’s going with them. And by staying true to ourselves as well, so we stay interesting and vibrant and, well, desirable.

JS1: Is it wrong to fantasize about running away? Okay, about doing the horizontal tango with someone who is not necessarily your spouse?

JS2: I hope not. I figure that anything happening between your own two ears is your business. I’ve talked with a lot of women now about this topic, and trust me when I say you’re not the only one going to see “Iron Man” ten times not for the action but to moon over Robert Downey Jr’s dreamy eyes. They’re so dark and deep and… Ahem. Excuse me. I have some, um, thinking to do.

Sarah Vowell on New York City

Sarah Vowell was on The Daily Show recently and she wasn't too happy with the way some politicians praise New York City on September 11, and then use New York City as the paragon of all that's evil and elitist about America when they're on the stump in middle America:



Did I mention that Vroman's will be hosting Sarah Vowell at All Saints Church on Thursday, October 16 at 7 p.m. That's next Thursday! Did I mention that? Well, I did now. (Thanks to Jezebel for first posting this video.)

Some Awards, Some Video Entertainment, and My Youth: Just Wednesday's Links'

There's a lot happening in the world of literature today, and you've got a right to hear about all of it.

• The National Book Foundation has announced its 5 Under 35 Fiction selections for 2008. The winners are Nam Le, Sana Krasikov, Keith Gessen, Fiona Maazel, and Matthew Eck. I've had drunken conversations with both Le and Krasikov, and I had a sober conversation with Gessen when he was here for his event in April. Congratulations to all of them.

• I found this video of David Henry Sterry explaining how to get an agent pretty funny (courtesy of Galleycat): David Henry Sterry will be leading an event similar to this one ("The Art of the Memoir") at Vroman's on Friday, October 3. Panelists will include the very funny Chelsea Handler, author of Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea.

• It's National Punctuation Day. Celebrate accordingly. I like to use dashes myself. How about you?
  

• For some reason, I find myself thinking about Buster Olney's Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty today. Hmm, why could that be?

• A New York Times Magazine profile of Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap, where Dylan Thomas, Saul Bellow, Milton Friedman, and I all used to drink (though, admittedly, not together).
  

Weekend Links (Not the Golf Kind)

Something for the weekend, something for the soul, something for you:

• How do you choose what book to read? "Is the book published by a company that you’ve never heard of — or, far worse, does that company appear to share the last name of the author or his yacht?"

• Sana Krasikov, author of the new story collection One More Year, writes about reading Andre Dubus in Iowa at The Millions.

• James Marcus interviews Philip Roth in the Los Angeles Times.

• Slate is running excerpts of State by State, a new book featuring essays on all 50 states. Vroman's will be hosting a screening of Powell's Out of the Book film of State by State on Friday, October 10.

Sleep late tomorrow. You deserve it.

Guest Post from David Fuller, Author of Sweetsmoke

David Fuller is the author of the novel Sweetsmoke. He will be at Vroman's on Tuesday, September 16 at 7 pm. Set during the Civil War, Sweetsmoke is the story of Cassius Howard, a carpenter and slave, who risks everything to uncover the truth behind the murder of a freed black woman, Emoline, a beloved soul who taught him to read and once saved him. Pat Conroy describes Sweet Smoke as “a fascinating and gripping novel about the Civil War…part mystery, part love story, and a harrowing portrait of slavery that reads with the immense power of the slave narratives.” Mr. Fuller writes about how he conceived of the novel and its main character, Cassius:

"Sweetsmoke has endured a long journey, with 8 years of research behind me before I started writing the novel. I am not a historian; I am a storyteller. The research I did was in support of that specific area of the country, Virginia, at that specific time, 1862. I set out to avoid the minefield of writing about the noble slave versus the evil planter. My research had told a trickier, more nuanced story. The peculiar institution of slavery was appalling, degrading and morally reprehensible. Within that reality, I learned about human beings and their foibles and their ironies, people who proved to be just as foolish, intelligent, kind, vicious, worthy and disgusting as any you might meet today. With Sweetsmoke, I wanted to show how all the people lived under the umbrella of slavery, to show how politics raged in the slave quarters as well as in the big house, to show how people created families not just among their own but across racial lines. The relationship at the heart of the novel is the strange, almost father-son, relationship between the white planter and master of Sweetsmoke Plantation, Hoke Howard, and his slave, Cassius.

After having written over 50 screenplays, I have never before written a character like Cassius. He was, and is, unique in my world. He was a man who lived in a time of complete oppression, yet he was definitively not a victim by personality. I have never been comfortable writing from the point of view of a victim. As Cassius was anything but a victim, I could write his story and relate to him. I could see his world through his eyes.

Please come by Vroman’s next Tuesday and say hello. I’d love to talk with you about these stories and others that concerned writing the novel."

--David Fuller

Brian Greene is a Smart Guy

Brian Greene writes about physics, superstring theory, and other subjects that confuse many of us....Okay, they confuse me. Vroman's is hosting him at Cal Tech's Beckman Auditorium next Tuesday, September 9 at 8 pm. He'll be presenting ideas from his new book Icarus at the Edge of Time, which is about black holes. The event is free, and as you can see from this, it will be fascinating:

Night of the Gun

David Carr's Night of the Gun is getting a ton of buzz this summer, with some claiming his reportage-style approach to the memoir is the perfect response to the recent "fictional memoir" phenomenon. For those not familiar with Carr's story, check out his really sharp website. [Authors, publicists, and web designers take note: this is how book sites should be done.]

Carr's story is pretty remarkable: he was an abusive junkie and small-time drug dealer who eventually turned around his life, raised twin daughters on his own, and became a columnist for the New York Times. He'll be at Vroman's on Tuesday night. Be there, fool.

Monday Links

I think I'm the only person left in the world who isn't watching the Olympics. The world without TV is a strange and terrifying place, not unlike Utica, NY. On to the links:

• Edan interviews Nam Le at the Millions, where they talk about colon exams, Provincetown, and Friday Night Lights.
  

• David Carr's Night of the Gun, reviewed in the New York Times. Carr will be at Vroman's next Tuesday.
  

• The Top 10 literary virgins.
  

"Butovo: Field of Repressed Memory" A Guest Essay by Daniel Silva

Daniel Silva is the author of eleven bestselling novels, including The Confessor, The Secret Servant, and A Death in Vienna. He will be at Vroman's on Wednesday, August 13 at 7 pm to discuss and sign his new book Moscow Rules. What follows is an essay Mr. Silva wrote about a recent trip to Russia.

Butovo: Field of Repressed Memory

By Daniel Silva

I noticed the article in the New York Times while I was preparing to head to Russia to begin researching my new novel, Moscow Rules. Butovo, one of Stalin’s killing grounds during the Great Terror, had been turned into a memorial and was now open to the public. We contacted our guide and told him we wanted to visit the site during our stay in Moscow. He agreed to take us there but later admitted that he had been quite surprised by the request. No American had ever asked to be taken to Butovo. In fact, he himself had never been there.

It had been a village once. Now it was a leafy Moscow suburb and a beehive of real estate development. To reach it, we headed south from the center of Moscow, down the thunderous Leninsky Prospekt, which is lined with the largest apartment blocks I have ever seen. As I wrote near the climax of Moscow Rules, “It was as if the masters of the Communist Party, in all their infinite wisdom, had decided to uproot the entire population of the world’s biggest country and resettle it here, along a few wretched miles of the Leninsky Prospekt.”

Eventually, the apartment blocks gave way to warehouses and factories, and soon we even began to see small dachas in the woods along the road. When finally we arrived in Butovo, it took us several minutes to actually find the old killing ground. It had recently been entrusted to the Russian Orthodox Church; a young priest had agreed to give us a tour. I cannot recall his name, but I will never forget his appearance. He was an elfin figure, thin as a reed, with a shirt collar two inches too big and an old-fashioned flat cap perched on his narrow head. He spoke no English; our Russian guide, a former schoolteacher and Communist Party member, provided simultaneous translation.

He led us first to a small wooden church that had been erected in the center of the field. Next to the church were several display boards covered with police photographs of the soon-to-be-dead. The images were haunting; I had the distinct impression that the victims knew what fate awaited them. Next to the photos was a macabre chart that showed the pace of executions on a month-by-month basis. The NKVD had called this place Butovsky Poligon—literally, the Butovo Shooting Range. Night after night, from August 1937 to October 1938, Stalin’s executioners killed opponents of the regime, real or imagined, and dumped their bodies in long trenches dug by earthmovers. At least twenty thousand were murdered at Butovo, only a tiny fraction of the more than seven hundred thousand Soviet citizens believed to have been executed during the wild orgy of killing known as the Great Terror. But Butovo is significant for another reason: it is one of the few places in the New Russia where one can pay tribute to the victims of the Soviet regime.

We did not speak much as we filed past the burial trenches, and when we did it was usually in a whisper. Small groups of Russians followed after us—the elderly, the middle-aged, the young—nearly all in tears. No one knows where individuals are buried at Butovo. The only way to walk past the remains of a loved one is to walk past them all. And even then, one cannot be absolutely certain of having been in close proximity to the bones of a family member or a loved one. The priest told us that there were almost surely more mass graves in the adjoining woods and meadows.

I had been to such places before—while researching A Death in Vienna, I visited the Treblinka extermination camp in eastern Poland and walked alone past its terrible cremation pits—but there was something about Butovo that troubled me deeply. It was not the Russian state that tended this patch of sacred ground but the Orthodox Church. You see, the rulers of the New Russia aren’t much interested in exposing the sins of the Soviet past. In fact, they are engaged in a carefully orchestrated endeavor to airbrush away its most repulsive aspects. One can understand their motives. The NKVD, which ran the killing operation at Butovo, was the forerunner of the KGB. And former officers of the KGB, including Vladimir Putin himself, are now running Russia. I wrote of this attempt to sanitize the past, and the reasons behind it, in Moscow Rules:

Now, in the minds of the New Russians, the murderous crimes of the Bolsheviks were but a way station on the road to an era of Russian greatness. The gulags, the cruelty, the untold millions who were starved to death or “repressed”—they were only unpleasant details. No one had ever been called to account for his actions. No one had ever been punished for his sins.

There is a danger in this sort of historical myopia: the danger that it might happen again. The truth is, it is already happening. The new regime has revived the practice of sending its critics to psychiatric hospitals for “treatment.” And, in a few instances, it is even killing its critics or allowing them to be killed by others. The Russian people seem not to mind. Quite the opposite: most support harsh measures against opponents of the government. One wonders whether they would be so accommodating if their rulers allowed a full and frank exploration of the horrors that lie buried in the not-so-distant Russian past.


Our tour ended where it began, next to the little wooden church. The faces of the dead gazed silently at us as we bade good-bye to the priest and filed into our minibus. During the drive back to central Moscow, our Russian guide was in tears. He said the visit to Butovo had been one of the most moving experiences of his life. And had it not been for a request from an American novelist, he would never have gone. That, too, is a Russian tragedy.

Friday Book Trailer! Tana French!

Tana French writes literary thrillers in the vein of Mystic River. This is the trailer for her latest book, The Likeness.

First of all, this is really nicely photographed. It makes me want to go to Ireland. But there's a moment when the camera focuses on French, and the film cuts to a couple of different shots of her peering through the trees. The effect is...unsettling. What do you think?

Incidentally, Tana French will be appearing at Vroman's on Wednesday, August 6 for our Literaries Who Lunch series.

[And the trailer doesn't seem to want to embed. That's awesome. You can watch it here if it doesn't appear.]

Jeanne Kelley in Bon Appetit

Local chef and food writer Jeanne Kelley has a small urban farm where she raises a goat and some chickens and has a vegetable garden. She is in this month's issue of Bon Appetit (I know, because I'm a subscriber). She has several recipes that I'm going to attempt in the next few weeks (including a goat cheese and green olive crustini. Yum). Jeanne will be at Vroman's on Wednesday, July 23 to present her new cookbook Blue Eggs & Yellow Tomatoes. I would link to the article, but it appears that Bon Appetit doesn't put all of their content on line. So buy the magazine already! And come to Vroman's for the event.

New Hispter Book Club! Now with more lists!

The new issue of Hipster Book Club is up. As I mentioned yesterday, it's the music issue (there's a bit of non-musical content, too, like a review of David Benioff's City of Thieves). Among the manifold joys are an interview with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, a review of his new book 33 1/3: Black Sabbath's Master of Reality, and bands compiling their "Top 5 Desert Island books." Many of the bands had a shockingly literal interpretation of the question. In Kyle Olson's "Literary Muxtape," he compiles a list of twelve songs for bibliophiles that include "The Book of Love" by Magnetic Fields, "Graham Greene" by John Cale, and "Marx and Engels" by Belle & Sebastian.

I used to do this in my spare time: think of a bunch of songs centered around a theme. Like I did one that was all about movies. I think it had "Stanley Kubrick" by Mogwai, "Cassavetes" by Fugazi...help me out here..."The Right Profile" by The Clash, I think. Anyway, you get the idea. A common one was books and authors. Belle & Sebastian are probably the most bookish rock band (are they really a rock band?), and they have about a dozen songs that reference reading, bookshops, etc., but they're a bit obvious. Another bookish band, The Decemberists, have a song about contemporary writer Myla Goldberg. I always thought that was cool, since the song came out about five minutes after Goldberg's debut novel Bee Season. It would be like me writing a pop song about Keith Gessen. "Everyday I Write the Book," by Elvis Costello is a classic literary rock song, and, to my knowledge, the only song that directly addresses process, unless you count the one line in "Dancing in the Dark," when Bruce informs us that, like every other novelist on earth, he's "sick of sittin' round here tryin' to write this book." (I'm pretty sure most novelists could also use a "love reaction," but I digress).

What would be on your literary mixtape?

(Oh, and I should shill once more for the July 12 event at Vroman's featuring Hipster Book Club's Yennie Cheung and Kyle Olson and the band Red Pony Clock.)