Living the Dream: Book Heaven

People ask me a lot why I love book blogging. It is, after all, extremely time consuming and something that one cannot (in good conscience) BS their way through. It's done without compensation and the reception of said reviews can be... hit or miss.  But sometimes there are these golden days when appreciation and fun piles up, and I spin around in my desk chair at work feeling so blissed out to be part of the writerly network. 

Exhibit A:

BOOK IT! Before Thanksgiving, I tweeted about my affinity for personal pan pizzas and their early-90s connection to reading all of the things. After gobbling a bunch of Lispector, I was feeling like I'd definitely earned some cheesy goodness.  Something even better happened... The lovely people of Book It found my tweet and sent me this vintage shirt as a thanks for the shout-out. I am going to wear this shirt, like... way too much.

"Other Life Forms" - This new book by Julia Glassman is the first release of indie publisher Dinah Press.  I received a sweet email from the author, who had seen my involvement with Papercut Press (I wrote one of the featured blurbs/reviews of "The Narrows") and asked me if I'd be interested in checking out her work.  The book is gorge and I'm stoked to crack it open ASAP. 

"Sky Saw" by Blake Butler - Sent to my doorstep by NY Tyrant Books after some fangirl tweets.  This press, this art... I want to just swim around in it. Really grateful for the advance release copy. May fall asleep spooning this.

"An Extraordinary Theory of Objects" by Stephanie Lacava - Subtitled "A Memoir of An Outsider in Paris," this book is physically a piece of covetable art. TLC Books and HarperCollins sent this my way to review, and though I hate to admit I'm totally judging a book by its cover... holy crap, it's sharp. 

Okay, so "Rapture" by Kameron Hurley is kind of the one hitch in the giddy-up here, but a good laugh nonetheless. San Francisco Book Review meant to send me poet Carol Ann Duffy's collection "Rapture" for review, and I think some wires may have gotten crossed.  Looks like this "Rapture" is a little more heavy on space worms than sonnets.

Exhibit B:

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm working with poets Ed Smallfield and Alice Jones of Apogee Press as Associate Editor.  Today, a box chock-full of Pattie McCarthy's "Marybones" showed up.  These could not be more hot-off-the-presses. Here they are, waiting for me to send them to preliminary readers and reviewers.

It's blurry. I was freaking out at all the pretty.

And so, the mad dash to 2013 continues and I have about sixteen more skips in my step. Thank you to all the lovely humans that put magic in my mailbox this week.