The Olive Reader

Here it is the NY Times 10 Best Books of 2006. As the Amazon Blog puts it: “It’s always a deeply conservative list, and this year is no different.” That doesn’t mean that aren’t some great books on the list. Probably the 10 books you would most expect.

It’s hard to say what I like best about this feature. It’s either the fact that these are our authors…or the photos — which I love. Read at LitPark.

They “play songs about books.” Check out their MySpace page. They’re awesome.

Recommendation: Tête-à-Tête: The Tumultuous Lives & Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre by Hazel Rowley.

After reading this, I’m still not exactly sure what Lev Grossman thinks of Infinite Jest, but it is the book’s tenth anniversary. Seems fitting that it should be in the news when one of Wallace’s clearest inspirations, Thomas Pynchon, has a new novel out (as you may have heard).

When Jest was first released, Sven Birkerts had this to say: “The next step in fiction. … Edgy, accurate, and darkly witty. … Think Beckett, think Pynchon, think Gaddis. Think.”

Our own David Means has a new short story in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

Look at us…totally feeling the internet! Michael Crichton’s next book, NEXT explores the money-making potential of genes, while we, the devils we are, explore the online marketing potential of said book. In fact, we, or more specifically the HarperLuxe imprint, have gone so far as to create our own genetic research company — NEXTgencode — to not only promote the book but to address dire problems such as the extinction of natural blondes in the next 200 years. Together we can go, hand in hand, into the future. Plus there are puppies who live forever — as puppies!

The highly anticipated recap of The 100 Notable Books of the Year from the New York Times Book Review have been announced. I think that the Times will announce their top 10 soon…. so watch this space.

Our SciFi cousins at Eos Books have a roundtable discussion with authors John Crowley, Jeff Ford, James Morrow, and Tim Powers:

It strikes me that fantasy and science fiction collapse as soon as some message becomes evident — our vampires and star-ships instantly become just tokens for the real-world things that the story’s really about. I’ve told this story before, but — once I was on a panel about vampire books, and one woman on the panel said, “Dracula is actually about the plight of 19th century women,” to which I said, “No, it’s about a guy who lives forever by drinking other people’s blood. Don’t take my word for it, check it out.”

Carrie’s European Vacation: read her first dispatch here.

While most people think of Harry Potter when they hear about a midnight release party, three bookstores believe Thomas Pynchon deserves one and are staying open past midnight on Monday, November 20, to sell his first novel in nine years, Against the Day (Penguin Press, $35).

Trio Plan Midnight Events for Pynchon from PW Daily

Don’t miss this weekend’s NYT Book Review. Here are some highlighted features:

• Walter Kirn on the lives of Allen Ginsberg
• John Waters How Tennessee Williams Saved My Life
• Meghan O’Rourke “Whatever Happened to the Literary Avant-Garde?”
• Will Blythe on Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman
• Jonathan Miles on Edward Abbey’s cranky letters
• Ron Powers on Charles Bukowski

It’s not up on the website yet (or is it), but I can’t remember the last time the Book Review was loaded like this. Just thought you should know.

Great Books, Good Stories, Every Day — Today in Literature. This link courtesy of some handsome badass at Dalkey Archive Press.

The award ceremony was held last night at the Marriot in Times Square. “The Echo Maker” (FSG) by Richard Powers took honors for Fiction. Here are some things I’ve heard about the event:

“I forgot how funny Fran Lebowitz was, so go Fran Lebowitz.”

“Adrienne Rich’s speech received a resounding standing-O.”

“There were over 500 submissions for Non-Fiction. When one of the judges returned home from a book tour, she found that her children had made a fort from the books.”

“A significant number of fiction submissions dealt specifically with 9/12”

“It was easy to get a cab.”

The NY Times has the full.

I’m not sure about the rest of the Harper Perennial team, but I adhere to a strict “last to know” policy. Consequently, it requires the internet bullhorn that is Gawker to alert me to The Moth.

The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda’s porch…

It has been dubbed “New York’s hottest and hippest literary ticket” by The Wall Street Journal.

Get in on the action. There will be a StorySLAM this Monday, 11/20 @ 7PM. Check it.