Lantern slide of Waterfalls in Woodstock, NY, ca. 1904

Coffee and Paper

The Literary Gazette (its own glossy-covered tabloid section in the Hudson River Reporter) is not online. This is sad for 2 reasons: 1. RSOL is reviewed. Since I wrote the book I can't use adjectives like astute or sensitive or enlightening. But if you can find the LG, get it: there are adjective-deserving reviews scores of new books in it; it feels like the NYTimes Book Review around Christmastime and makes you want to buy them all.

You can find copies of the LG at The Golden Notebook in Woodstock, NY, another healthy independent bookstore that makes writers as well as readers feel welcome. (Whereas in certain stores, it's a bit like, Oh, you wrote this? Well, can you go away so we can make some money?)

This Saturday, July 21 at 5 p.m. the Golden Notebook is hosting a book party and signing for RLOS. Actually, the event itself is down Tinker Street at Joshua's Cafe upstairs. Thank goodness for all these upstairs sections or writers would never have anywhere to read.

Jessa Crispin of Bookslut

Pancakes and Sausage

A few more words about Chicago: The Book Cellar, which handled sales at the Bookslut reading, is one of those thriving, robust independent bookstores that just will not be overcome. Which makes a writer very happy.

Over dinner at the Hopleaf--a vast sandwich made with fig butter; giant paper cones of french fries--I asked Jessa if she also considered herself a writer. She shook her head, but with no rue or self-effacement. Just grace. Certainly she's a reader, a great reader, and she knows how to make one good party after another, whether in a beer-poster-clad upstairs room at the Hopleaf or Bookslut. She's a hostess for all of us, a sundress'd impressario. In that way she belongs on the same hearty category as Mike McGonigal: self-made, peripatetic, generous but with standards and boundaries. The other thing is that, like McGonigal, she gives off a slightly timeless vibe: a bit San Francisco 1950s, a bit Chianti in Greenwich Village, a bit rockabilly, a bit Christina's World. Makes me think we should all mix vintage into new, as it strikes our imaginations, is like brain candy, and certainly fits into the re-use edict of living in this heating world. She keeps it a bit cooler to be sure. Someone give her a giant grant.