The Olive Reader

The L.A. Times Book Prize nominees were announced today. The whole list is exciting but we’re particularly tickled by Rebecca Curtis’s nomination for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction for her story collection, Twenty Grand.

Like gambling? Like reading? Like criticism with consequences? If you answered yes to any two of those questions, then I’ve got something to sell you. The Morning News has once again organized the enormously popular Tournament of Books, which pits the year’s best and most notable books against one another in round-robin action. To raise the stakes, the 2008 edition will allow spectators to place bets on who the winner will be. “At the conclusion of the TMN 2008 Tournament of Books we’ll choose ten people at random who have backed the winning novel and send them each a huge prize package. Details on that to come, but don’t worry it’ll be worth it.” More importantly, every bet will go to First Book, “a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books.” Very rarely are my penchants for competition, vice, and charity satisfied all at once. Thanks, TMN.

Poets House Spring 2008 Season Opens on March 4th with “Harlem Renaissance Revisited” the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Click here for more information.

Tonight, Feb. 28th, in San Francisco, “Noise From Other Rooms” presented by Noise Pop, Rebel Reading Series, Wholphin. Music, literature, film: all happening.

Alex Itin – artist. If you like de Kooning, take a look.

Sean Wilsey, author of Oh, the Glory of It All, and co-editor (along with Matt Weiland) of The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, answers a few stray questions on the Paper Cuts blog. He’s certainly a favorite around here, and we’re looking forward to another co-edited venture, State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, which is due out from Ecco this summer.

If I only had stairs…The Amazing Staircase.

“Limited by space, we melded the idea of a staircase with our client’s desire for a library to form a ‘library staircase’ in which English oak stair treads and shelves are both completely lined with books.”

It’s snowing! Huzzah!

Also, Karl Porht, owner of Shaman Drum Booshop, Ann Arbor, Mich., is launching a blog “about books, the world of books and other things.” The blog is called there is no gap, which “refers to a line from Dogen Zenji’s Treasure of the True Dharma Eye.” In case that didn’t jump right out at you.

Also, here’s a website I enjoyed this morning: Dark Party Review.

Yes, I’m speaking to all of you. All readers of the OliveReader are my lovers. Don’t deny it. We’re crazy about each other. I want to visit all your houses and read love poems to you. But in the off chance that I’ll be unable to make it (or that I’m disinvited), the Academy of American Poets has compiled all that one might need for Valentine’s Day in their “Love Poems” feature. Yes, that’s the pay off. Now fly, you love-sick fools!

A few more weeks until it goes on sale!!! We Disappear by Scott Heim

Monday, February 11th
7-9 PM
KGB Bar
85 E. 4th St. btw. Bowery & 2nd Ave.
Free

“Join Awkward Press, a new publishing experiment from the creators of The Pumpkin Pie Show, A Very Merry Unauthorized Scientology Pageant, and Contemporary Press, for a night of reading, music, and future regrets.”

A great line-up of authors, including our own (at least partially) Tony O’Neill, will read from myriad works. Find out more here.

The New Yorker literary critic James Wood is profiled in the Financial Times. Good read.

An estimated seven million voters are still undecided on who they will choose for the next president of the United States, and tomorrow!, February 5th, in what is the closest we’ll ever come to a national primary, people in more than 20 states will go to the polls and cast their ballots.

Before you enter the voting booth, read political analyst Mark Halperin’s The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President. For a limited time only, you can access the entire book online for FREE with out Browse Inside tool.

In his indispensable guide, veteran reporter Halperin sizes up the candidates and outlines: – where they stand on all the major issues – where they come from – what they believe in – what the White House could look like under their potential presidency.

It’s an essential read before you enter your polling station, and now you can read it all for free! Click here or above.

Oh snap is right. After last night’s party celebrating the publication of Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow, a novel in verse about rival gangs of werewolves that terrorize Los Angeles, not only are we (am I) still buzzing but we have five signed copies with your name on them (well, Toby’s name on them). The first, you guessed it, five readers to write Michael.Signorelli@harpercollins.com with a viable mailing address will receive the aforementioned treat.

And since you asked, the party was fantastic! (Though my night ended a little early after I attempted to sit on thin air. The resulting bum-thump told me it was time to go home.) I look forward to your e-mails (kind of).

Also, for the full skinny, visit Toby’s website: http://www.sharpteeththebook.com