The Olive Reader

Something to do:

THURSDAY APRIL 3rd, New York City
McNally Robinson Booksellers, 52 Prince st, SoHo, NYC
(212) 274 1160

This event is scheduled for Thursday, Apr 3rd – 7:00 PM

“Author of The Secret Lives of People In Love (Turtle Point Press)
Simon Van Booy’s debut, the short story collection The Secret Lives of People In Love, has become a passionate favorite of McNally Robinson customers and staff members alike. This evening we are pleased to host an intimate reading and conversation with the author, downstairs in the poetry section. Please join us for the chance to experience these artful stories first-hand with one of our favorite authors.”

“Robert Fagles, Translator of the Classics, Dies at 74”

Since his premature departure from the States, Sebastian has kept busy as guest-blogger over at Powells.com. As evidenced by his many videos, blogs, interviews, articles, etc., every hello’s a show, so for a good time visit PowellsBooks.BLOG.

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And for those of you looking for a good cause (in case Sebastian’s wasn’t enough), read Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s blog about the foreclosure of the Edith Wharton House in Lenox, Massachusetts. Josh is the author of the memoir I Am Not Myself These Days and the forthcoming novel Candy Everybody Wants, two highly enjoyable, wonderfully written, oftentimes risqué books, so we were slightly surprised to learn that he’s such a Wharton fan (not that she wasn’t wonderfully enjoyable herself). To find out how to do your part in saving this cultural landmark and how Josh’s old cat, Edith Odessa Marie-Marie, holds this all together visit his blog: “House of not-so-much mirth.”

Julian Stanczak, “a key figure in the art and design movement that became an international phenomenon in the early 1960s,” shows a selection of his work from the last 40 years at The Danese Gallery in Chelsea, NY. The NY Sun reviews: “Playfully Matter-of-Fact.” It’s an impressive, wonderfully vibrant show.

Congratulations to an excellent independent, literary press, Archipelago Books, on winning the Miriam Bass prize, which honors “creativity in independent publishing.” PW reports.

The NY Times details the drama better than I can, (“British Memoirist Is Denied U.S. Entry”) but what should have been Sebastian’s grand arrival in the United States turned out to be a trying debacle that has left us perplexed and a little bleary-eyed. Author of the memoir Dandy in the Underworld, Sebastian Horsley was detained, questioned, and after churning in limbo for eight hours, sent back to the United Kingdom by US Customs at Newark International Airport on the grounds of “moral turpitude.” (“Turpitude: noun, 1) vile, shameful, or base character; depravity. 2) a vile or depraved act.”) They may also have been wary of the contents of his top hat. Anyway, his party was last night at Housing Works and even without our star, through good will, good publicity, and sheer momentum we celebrated his book in a manner that would have no doubt delighted Mr. Horsley.

Gawker
GalleyCat: go here for videos from the party!
The New York Observer: this is the piece to read. Booyah!

I’m two days late with my congratulations, but I expect it’s no sweat since Vroman’s Bookstore has been in existence for 114 years. PW has the full story.

This year’s PEN/Faulkner award goes to Kate Christensen’s The Great Man, “a novel about a celebrated painter and the three essential women in his life.” I read the galley, thought it was great, but then shared it. Zut ! Collectibles are just falling through my fingers. USA Today covers.

Poor Spitz. I hope everyone has been having their fun with the headlines. As for myself, I’ve gotten the gist and that’s about all I need on this one. If you too seek to distract yourself from the coquettish posings of every major news source, why not do so with a recently published trade paperback? Right?

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber, a NY Times bestseller in hardcover, follows two New York antique booksellers as they discover and interpret the mysterious writings of Richard Bracegirdle, a 15th-century knight with a secret that will shake the foundations of Western civilization! USA Today called it, “Breathlessly engaging…brilliant…few [thrillers] will surpass The Book of Air and Shadows when it comes to energetic writing, compellingly flawed characters, literary scholarship, and mathematical conundrums. Air and Shadows is also incredibly smart….unpredictable…We never had this much fun reading The Da Vinci Code. Gruber has raised the stakes in the thriller genre.”

The first five readers to write me at Michael.Signorelli@harpercollins.com will receive a free copy. Good luck!

Publishers Weekly asks Scott Heim three questions.

Well, last night in NYC the winners of the NBCC awards were announced. By category, the list below:

– Fiction: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (Riverhead)
– Nonfiction: Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington (Doubleday)
– Autobiography: Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat (Knopf)
– Biography: Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal (Yale University Press)
– Poetry: Elegy by Mary Jo Bang (Graywolf)
– Criticism: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross (FSG)

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James Frey, author of the forthcoming Bright Shiny Morning, has quite the blog: Big Jim Industries. Give a look-see, yah?

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My man Wenclas is keeping it up over at Happy American Literature.

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Bad news: federal funding has been cut for Reading is Fundamental, “a non-profit organization, founded in 1966, that distributes free books and literacy materials to children in need and promotes reading for both children and families, organizes book festivals and more.” Our friends at Eos have the full.

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Organizers of the EDS Dylan Thomas Prize, which “is intended to honor the best published writer in English under the age of 30 from anywhere in the world” and awards them about $119, are looking for more entrants from North America.

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Keith Gessen reads from his novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, and Joshua Cohen reads from his novel, A Heaven of Others, in this week’s Sunday Night Fiction Reading Series at KGB Bar 85 East 4th Street 7 PM

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Oh, and Dandy in the Underworld goes on sale in less than a week!

We’re signing a three-book deal, and I’m ecstatic.

And, visit Dennis’s amazing blog: DC’s