can’t find true love the old fashioned way?  judge others by their books & maybe get lucky.

seriously excellent advice for love/writing.

why writers should never date other writers.

nice series on the rumpus, about the last book i loved (including one of my new all-time favorite books: the zero)

turns out that one of the five key steps to inciting a revolution involves falling in love.

i ♥ penguin’s “great ideas” series, which includes george orwell’s why i write & william hazlitt’s on the pleasure of hating.  on the occasion of the 100th (and final) volume, the guardian chats with the series editor about their beautiful covers and his ten faves.

review, author interview, & excerpt of gary shteyngart’s super sad true love story—which features this killer opening: “Dearest Diary, Today I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die.”

i see you driving ’round town with the girl i love and i’m like, “fuck you!”  (ooo, ooo, oooo!)

We could probably convince Mark Knopfler that writing a book isn’t exactly “money for nothin’” and these authors aren’t playing “the guitar on MTV,” but other than that it’s pretty close to the Dire Straits song. Okay, so you might have to use your imagination to hear “Hawaiian noises” and see “bangin’ on the bongos like a chimpanzee,” but as music artists of earlier decades had to make videos for MTV to create hits, authors now put book trailers on YouTube to keep up with the Joneses—actually, the Roberts and the Pattersons. In other words, it’s not enough for writers to worry whether we are photogenic enough for the book jacket portrait, now we can also be anxious about appearing natural on film.   

Pamela Paul of the New York Times wrote an article earlier this month about the book trailer phenomena:

…the trailer is fast becoming an essential component of online marketing. Asked to draw on often nonexistent acting skills, authors are holding forth for anything from 30 seconds to 6 minutes, frequently to the tune of stock guitar strumming, soulful violin or klezmer music. And now, those who once worried about no one reading their books can worry about no one watching their trailers. (A mother still nursing her 8-year-old: 25,864,943 views; recent best-selling maternal memoirist: 5,124 views.) 

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