My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sloane Crosley is hilarious! So hilarious, in fact, that I find myself wishing we were friends but at the same time I’m wildly intimidated that I would be so unfunny in comparison. (You’re nodding, I can tell. Thanks for the confidence!) Anyway, I loved this collection of essays, her self-deprecating and others-deprecating humor, her attention to the most random details, and moments of heart-swelling depth, like this one: “There is one thing you know for sure, one fact that never fails to comfort you: the worst day of your life wasn’t in there, in that mess. And it will do you good to remember the best day of your life wasn’t in there, either.” Beautiful! Must read.

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An ordinary account holder gets free 5-7 business day shipping. I don’t have the emotional energy to wait that long to receive piano sheet music of Train’s “When I Look To The Sky”.

I am in need of new books to read. My daily Staten Island to Manhattan commute presents to me two free hours. I self-banned myself from listening to my ipod or going on my Iphone during this time. I stare at a computer all day at work and am trying the best I can to save my eyes from technological disintegration. On average, I read 1 book every two weeks which is 26 books a year. 1560 books every 60 years. I am three chapters away from finishing Sloane Crosley’s humorous set of essays compiled into a book called, “How Did You Get This Number?” I recommend it.

I put three books in my virtual shopping cart along with a new Iphone 4 case.

The order totaled $36.49. I virtually checked out. I “forgot” that my sister’s ”Prime” Amazon.com account is connected to credit card. I put the word “forgot” in quotes because I am being sarcastic. I know they are connected. I pressed, “submit order”.

Today I got this email from my sister.

You spelt alligator wrong. I thought in my head. I responded. 


Capitalizing certain words in the email helped portray how “sorry” I was.  I ain’t writing her no checks. See ya laataaa alligaatttaaa.

One of the stories in this collection is title a phrase I happen to have repeated several times that is a bit off-putting but situationally funny so I won’t say what it is because it may defile reading eyes. So, yeah, I’m kind of biased against these essays. And I was against her first book too, because after reading it I felt like someone had already had my life without any of the painful moments or struggles and that’s a hard pill to swallow. This one wasn’t even as well-written as the first one. Many of the essays seem to be meandering about in self-amusement. You got a great deal on furniture because you sort of smiled at someone who has access to the delivery truck and can mess it up so you can get a better price? That’s nice, who the hell can afford to buy new furniture anymore? Perhaps the problems in these essays would seem quirky and cute to me if I…no, they never would, she just doesn’t have the right tone for me to be amused by these stories.

The other woman writer who reminds me of me and has lived a much better life but comes off way less smug than Sloane Crosley does (especially about New York, sigh, I’m tired of essayists from New York, and I’m tired of coastally focused smugness) is Rachel Shukert. She has some seriously funny essays that she’s published on Nerve (where I first found her) and in collections that reflect that things haven’t always been handed to her; there’s a resonant tone that she uses that Crosley lacks. I blame it on Shukert’s Midwestern upbringing. When I read her work I think she appreciates what she’s accomplished and didn’t just step into it. When I read Crosley’s work I think she expects another damn pony.

Whatever, say Pickles, Murderface, and Belvedere. No real struggle, no real story. And what’s with the dead pets? As though they’re just there to be replaced? No one could replace these three – not a trip to Portugal, not an easily acquired book deal, not an interview with Chuck Klosterman, nothing.

I had heard such great things about Room. In the Louisville Courier Journal last week, Silas House (author of The Coal Tatoo) was quoted, “Room by Emma Donoghue is a literary thriller of the highest order, and I can’t imagine a better pick for beach reading that also has high literary merit. Room has deep emotional resonance, suspense (I actually gasped aloud while reading it at one point, on a crowded airplane, nonetheless), and memorable characters. I couldn’t put it down, and I’ve been recommending it to everyone.”

Okay, so that is an awesome recommendation. So I bought it. And the other was Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number? Sloane’s last book I Was Told There’d Be Cake was a great collection of essays about her life, which I thought was funny and I enjoyed her different take on awkward situations. Her new book was said to follow suit.

After reading a review by David Sedaris, I knew I had to buy it.

“How sure footed and observant Sloane Crosley is. How perfectly, relentlessly funny. If you needed a bib while reading I Was Told There’d Be Cake, you might consider diapers for How Did You Get This Number.”
—David Sedaris

So my question for you is: What book MUST I read this summer? On my Favs page you will see some of my favorite books, but I want to hear from you, what is your favorite book? What have you recently read that you fell in love with? I want to know.

XOXO

Al

nonfiction books by mdabski on Polyvore.com

Talking to Heaven, by James Van Praagh
James Van Praagh says he can communicate with spirits. I have a couple of friends who really want to believe this is possible and they convinced me to read this book. He not only details many stories about families, the spirits they want to reach, and his miraculous gift to help them; he also details his own life and his discovery of his own ability. On the one hand, I can see why this can be a comforting idea for the families of people who die. On the other hand, just google Mr Van Praagh and you’ll find plenty of reason to doubt him. Entertaining, I suppose, but I prefer Mary Roach’s Spook if you want to discuss the afterlife.

Pretty in Plaid, by Jen Lancaster
This is a collection of stories from Jen Lancaster’s early years: childhood adventures, dalliances in Europe, prepster pitfalls, college mayhem, and that one time when a doctor locked her in a closet at his office until she fixed an insurance problem for him. You probably haven’t heard of her because she’s not a celebrity or a politician running for office. So why is she worthy of a memoir? She’s just funny. As far as I can tell, she made it as a writer because she tells good stories and good stories seem to happen to her. I read it on a plane with a screaming 2 year old sitting next to me, and I was sort of annoyed when the plane landed. Take that as you will.

The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin
How nice for Elizabeth Gilbert that she could drop everything for a year to find herself while a publisher paid her to gallivant around the world. Rubin’s book is for those of us who want to find some improved happiness even though we can’t study directly from a yogi in Bali or whatever. Basically, she spends each month in the year trying to implement different strategies meant to enhance happiness. There’s some good nuggets in there and she’s not quite as smug or self-centered as some other self-help writers I could name, but it is sort of annoying to read about the tricks that work for her that are impossible for the average person. Example: working out mid-morning is so nice because the gym isn’t packed. Reality: Those of us with 9-to-5s have no choice, successful-freelancer-who-sets-her-own-schedule.

How Did You Get This Number? by Sloane Crosley
Crosley offers up another collection of sly, relatable stories from her charmed but sometimes embarrassing life. The title comes from a story about a bad man who cheated on her. Ultimately, the cheating leads to a phone conversation with the Other Woman. Since I’ve been in that unenviable position, I appreciated that story quite a bit.

Sleepwalk with Me, by Mike Birbiglia
If you want to know if you’ll like this book, just go listen to this performance by Birbiglia at The Moth in NYC. He tells the hilarious and true story of his sleepwalking disorder and the real world consequences. The rest of the book is pretty much like this.

Bossypants, by Tina Fey
Oh, Tine Fey. I’d like to write you some gushing fan mail, but I’m certain you’d never see it. You’re like the geeky older sister I never had who could have commiserated with me about adult acne, secretly joined me for late night viewing of sci-fi movies, and then introduced me to all the cool funny kids that I admire. True that I actually have an older sister whom I love, so maybe you would be better as an awesome cousin. Either way, Tina’s at the top of my girl crush list.

Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich
A bunch of kids from MIT figure out how to maximize the power of card counting in Vegas to take the town for millions before slinking back to their high-powered finance and engineering jobs with their town homes fully paid. Ben Mezrich of Social Network fames does his usual non-fiction-told-in- fiction-format schtick and leaves aspiring writers every where grinding their teeth because their random acquiatences don’t ever walk up to them at parties and say, “Hey, want to hear a good story?” and then agree to let them publish it.

Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer
Young journalist covers a memory championship and returns to win it the next year. In the year between, he immerses himself in the seriously competitive world of the memory-obsessed and explores the science behind our minds. It’s a really great read and I really like the chatty tone. Even though I walked away from the book with some new trivia about the human mind, the whole thing felt like I just sat down for drinks with a good friend who happened to be an expert on memory.

Anna in Brentwood
The Wayward Bus
By John Steinbeck
I decided I wanted to read something fun and relaxing, and somehow this translated into my picking up one of Steinbeck’s goofier, lust-filled novels. Both the version of myself who slogged through Grapes of Wrath in high school and the one who rapturously pored over East of Eden in college would be appalled.

Diane in Brentwood
Growing Up Jung
By Micah Toub
Toub is the son of TWO Jungian psychologists. His writing style is a delight and it’s clear that with all the introspection wafting around his childhood home, he’s as screwed up at the rest of us.

Geo in Brentwood
I Hotel
By Karen Tei Yamashita
Yamashita encapsulates the complex political environment of 1960s San Francisco in a truly ambitious, explosive, and enthralling novel.

John Peck in Oakland
How Did You Get This Number
By Sloane Crosley
Great humor writing, with a refreshing feet-on-the-ground (i.e. not too precious) take on life’s absurdities.

Margaret in Oakland
Lions at Lamb House
By Edwin M. Yoder Jr.
Another of those fabulous finds from Europa Editions–a fictive encounter between Henry James and Sigmund Freud at James’ country estate on the East Sussex coast. Deliciously droll.

Thank you. Well, the first reading I ever did was three or four years ago for I Was Told There’d Be Cake. I was nervous so I rushed through it and read an extremely short essay. I guess I assume that people are showing up out of pity or obligation and don’t actually want to hear me read. I’m not sure where this defeatist attitude comes from. Oddly, it tends to make for a dry, funny reading because when people laugh, I rarely laugh with them. I just push on through because I’m grateful for the good response but am never sure how to handle it.

Has the personal nature of your essay-writing affected your relationships or lifestyle in any way? (I’m thinking friends not telling you secrets anymore/you staying out later than you should for the sake of ‘material’)

No, it hasn’t. I don’t really write straight memoir of tell-all. That might change things. But an experience has to fit into some sort of larger point or theme or even annoyance. That takes time and it’s rare. I do have a lot of conversations with affectionately sarcastic friends and those conversations go like this:

Me: All the tickets for this movie are sold out.

Them: Cool. Why don’t you write an essay about it?

In I Was Told There’d Be Cake, you wrote a touching elegy for your precious collection of My Little Ponies and in Number, you remember pre-teen board games (I owned Mall Madness). What toys do you plan to tackle next?

It’s funny because I think of the new essay (If You Sprinkle) as having a much more direct relationship with the Oregon Trail essay (Bring Your Machete To Work Day) from the last book. So maybe in 10 years there’ll be a Taboo or Uno essay that pops out.

And have you had any My Little Pony relapses at all? (Those lady gaga ones all over the internet a while ago were cute).

I loved those. There was a Poison Ivy one in that series too, I think. Of course I saw them. But no relapses. Though, due to the book, I have been given new plastic ponies as a joke. So the drawer has been replenished a bit.

Would you like to see a resurgence in the essay as popular artform? Or are you happy as the NYC essay-queen?

Of course I would. And I’m not the Queen of anything. I can barely get my landlord to fix my bathroom doorknob so I don’t keep getting locked in from the inside. That’s some ineffective Queenishness right there.

Which of your essays in the new collection is your personal favourite and why?

I like Show Me On The Doll, Take A Stab At It, Light Pollution and the last one, Off The Back Of A Truck. I think they have the most heart.

You’ve successfully switched from book publicist to author (and back again). Have other publishing professionals come out to you as would-be authors?

More than not. I work for a very literary publishing house [vintage/anchor, part of Random House], which means there are smart talented writers on both sides of the equation.

Top tip for starting a conversation at a launch party?

When there’s a moment of silence just look at the other person and say “do you hear that?” and just look really crazy and walk away.

And escaping one? See also: above.

And finally – what are you reading this summer? I read Freedom, the new Jonathan Franzen, C by Tom McCarthy and just started A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

Find more SLOANE at her website & twitter & buy HDYGTN & read a great/proper guardian interview with her.

PS. sloane is also on our MUST-DISCUSS list for the salon pamflet bookclub this autumn.

Sloane Crosley’s new collection of memory essays, How Did You Get This Number, finds the witty, observational young lass being witty and observational in and out of New York City–but mostly in. There are trips to Portugal and Paris, and a weird wedding in Alaska. There’s a remembrance of all the childhood pets that didn’t make it. There’s a story about buying furniture of questionable origin off the back of a truck. At times Crosley’s archness can be grating, as dry observations pile one upon the other, but her gift for exacting, sharp detail and her willingness to let her guard down at just the right moment in most of the selections make for a funny and compelling read. I’m still not sure why there’s no question mark in the title, though. How Did You Get This Number is new in hardback from Riverhead Books.

I just got my advance review copy of James Ellroy’s forthcoming memoir The Hilliker Curse, so I haven’t had time to read much of it, but the story so far is morbidly fascinating (like, you know, an Ellroy novel. But this is real. Because it’s a memoir). In 1958, James’s mother Jean Hilliker had divorced her husband and begun binge drinking. When she hit him one night, the ten year old boy wished that she would die. Three months later she was found murdered on the side of the road–the case remains unsolved. The memoir details Ellroy’s extreme guilt; his sincere belief that he had literally cursed his mother pollutes his life, particularly in his complex relationships with women. Full review forthcoming. The Hilliker Curse is available September 7th, 2010 from Knopf.

I picked up her first book “I Was Told There’d Be Cake” because I’d read somewhere (I read a lot have you got that yet?) that she was the next Sarah Vowell.  She isn’t thought that in no way is a bad thing.  Sarah Vowell writes books about history and American life (This American Life) and how it relates to Sarah Vowell.  And since she is the above average intelligence everywoman, how it relates to you.  Or me.  Someone.  In any case, Crosley’s not that everywoman.  She’s more like the best friend you had at your suburban high school that you see once a year when you both go home for the holidays.  And she has great stories. 

A lot of woman in their early thirties spend their weekends hop scotching from wedding to wedding (unless you live in one of those places where people get married right out of high school, in which case the only place to buy books in your town is Walmart so enjoy those Sookie Stackhouse novels!) but for most of us these wedding weekends don’t include a random redneck getting out of a truck and calmly shooting a baby bear.  Everyone has a crazy roommate story.  Obsessive compulsive roommates are a rite of passage.  But did your clandestine apartment hunting involve hooker ghosts and a chandelier made of baby doll heads?  No?  This one does.  There’s also a story of the running into the queen bee of jr high eight years later.  Which is something that never happens anymore in the days of Facebook.  Plus there’s taxi’s that smell like vomit (universal), dead childhood pets (sad and universal) and the story the title comes from that’s amazing.  I relate all too well with that one, only my guy was married.  And his wife hadn’t left him as much as she was visiting her sister for the summer.  Awkward.

Bottomline, read this book.  I give it four out five “Oscars After The Dentist”

just as good as the first time

Everyone loves the story in her recently released sophomore collection of humorous essays, How Did You Get This Number, about Sloane Crosley spinning a globe and going to the destination that her finger lands on. What hits home for me is the Girl Talk board game memories, among other of her foibles from her kush upper-middle class life.

 If you’re wondering what’s up with the bear on the cover, the bear who very well may be accusing us of drunk dialing Sloane, you’ll have to wait until a middle chapter in which she divulges the matter on a trip to Alaska. Back in the lower 48, the New York Times Bestsellers author of her debut collection, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, is a true poster girl of our favorite Manhattanite writer. Sloane Crosley is ringing in a new slew of totally relatable comedic writing.

ow Did You Get This Number opens with “Show Me on the Doll,” a story in which an almost 30-something Sloane goes to Lisbon alone expecting to have an epic vacation, but ends up cowering in her hotel and feeling lonely most of the time — like most of us would. “Lost in Space” details how she went from being labeled a genius baby to a kid with zero spatial-relations skills to a woman can’t tell time on an analog clock. “Take a Stab at It” is a very funny story filled with recognizable characters (the anorexic, OCD roommate; the too-cool-to-care hipster) that captures the way we define ourselves by where we live, whether we’re the post-frat types on the Upper East Side or bohemians living in a condemned former whorehouse on the Bowery. In “It’s Always Home You Miss,” she manages to take a simple literary fart joke — “hey, taxis smell bad!” and turn it into a story of growing up and growing lonely as an adult, but still feeling like you’re on a precipice between adolescence and responsibility. On one level “Light Pollution” is about Sloane’s trip to Alaska for a friend’s wedding, but it’s also about living in the moment and the impossibility of ever recapturing said moment 100 percent accurately. “If You Sprinkle” introduces us to the Zooey Ellis, the despotic Queen Bee of Sloane’s middle school who is (almost) exactly the same when Sloane runs into her in Chinatown bathroom more than 10 years later. Sloane gives a brief history all of the animals that passed through the Crosley “family zoo” in “An Abbreviated Catalog of Tongues” — including a rather unfortunate albino squirrel. “Le Paris!” explains how Sloane got herself banished from the city for life thanks in part to a large antique wall thermometer. The final essay in the collection, “Off the Back of a Truck,” tells the painful story of a failed relationship that dovetails nicely with two bits of childhood wisdom from her mother: “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it,” and “you should never wear anything you can’t afford to lose.” Check out a few of our favorite passages from the book below, and let us know what you think in the comments section. From “Take a Stab at It”: “Don’t get me wrong — I’m not one to stand on principle when I can sleep in a duplex. I wouldn’t kick gentrification out of bed if it crawled in there free of charge. But it never does. And so despising it becomes not only the right thing to do but the economical thing to do. Reading the ordinance, I found some small consolation in all this, both morally and personally. My haunted real estate heaven would have quickly become a living hell. A few months of freestanding fireplaces and toothbrush hair-crafting and the whole building would be dragged down into a pile of rubble. Not reduced but worse — replaced. “Already replaced was my conviction that my whole New York existence hinged on my address.” From “Light Pollution”: “For the first time I understood why people come back from Alaska with fifty pictures of glaciers or return from a honeymoon in Tahiti with fifty pictures of the same sunset. The world is so beautiful in these places, it is impossible to register that there will be more more, more. Surely this is it. Negotiate with your ailing camera battery. How can it not stay alive for this? How can you believe that twenty minutes from now there will be an even taller forest, an even wider waterfall? We are only as good as our most extreme experiences.” From “Off the Back of a Truck”: “Up until this point, I had thought we could all be like a Woody Allen film. We could be great friends, and our humor would stem from the fact that there was no way in hell we should get along this well. In addition to an emotional suspension of disbelief, that would require us all being equals. Suddenly, I was the Soon-Yi. I did not want to be the Soon-Yi. I also didn’t want to be the Mia, the one who finds the Polaroids. It was bad enough I was turning over the postcards. Woody was the only pure option, and that role had already been cast.”

For someone who appears so upbeat — as she was on the phone — Crosley’s disappointment bubbles below the surface. It’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it honesty, served with a quick joke and wry laugh, as when she talks about the sting left by critics who labelled her first book’s success the result of knowing the right people because of her day job as a book publicist in New York City.

“It’s the kind of thing that makes me laugh. You, too, could have these connections where, if you took a job where nine hours a day you were promoting other peoples’ work and being treated like a glorified Avon lady, this life, too, can be yours! It’s sort of ridiculous, in a way. It’s sort of like a right-place, right-time thing.” She laughs.
Crosley is the 31-year-old author of the best-selling 2008 book I Was Told There’d Be Cake and the upcoming How Did You Get This Number. Her publisher accounts for her appeal by touting her as an “everywoman.” Indeed, self-deprecation in the face of unfortunate circumstances is one of the strongest tools in her essayist arsenal.

Her first book recounted tales of a twentysomething woman navigating life in New York City; her new collection takes those coming-of-age themes on a trip to Europe (although there are a few pieces set in NYC). She encounters Portuguese clown students in Lisbon, has a guy call the cops on her in France, goes apartment-hunting with a straight male friend in New York and, in an essay about her childhood, watches her father bury pets in Tupperware — all reminders that there is humour in the chaotic mess of maturing.

This time around, she hopes she’s improved in the tightrope walk — skewing to entertainment over confession. “I think what it really is is [critics] hoping for a Catholic Church confession where you go in, confess your sins and get absolved, and that’s it, everything’s fixed and you officially are a writer because you’ve confessed everything,” she says. “You just have to remember, you’re a volunteer. No one’s asking you to tell your story, so you have to entertain them.”

The story of how she got her first essay published is every struggling writer’s dream. A friend, an editor at The Village Voice, read a funny email she’d written, got her to clean it up and published it. Not that Crosley is above envy herself. On house-hunting with a friend: “I could feel the resentment bubble. Not like a cheese bubble, which is very noticeable, but like a little pocket of raw guilt heating into something altogether different, something that muttered, ‘You’re not even paying rent, you asshole, your parents are.’ ” Unsurprisingly, this frankness has ended friendships. “The thing is, when you’re writing something that’s so much from your perspective, it’s not a novel. So you’re under no obligation really to put yourself in other people’s shoes. You have to do it because you’re either an a–hole or not,” she says firmly.

Crosley, recently promoted to deputy director of publicity for the book publisher Vintage/Anchor, represents a slate of heavyweight writers, including Joan Didion, Dave Eggers, Toni Morrison and Jay McInerney. “There are definitely moments that I’ve read something by an author I work with and it’s been so amazing that I’ve abused having their email address to send them gushy notes. It humanizes them,” she says. “It can be good or bad, having your heroes turn into normal people.”

She’s sick of the critics who say she gets her book blurbs (from the likes of David Sedaris and Jonathan Lethem) from the long contact list she’s built at work. “I think I’m really lucky. I don’t mean to sound exasperated. It’s just, people have been talking about, ‘Oh Sloane and her connections’ for so long. I’m curious to know, it feels like training wheels, and I wonder when those will come off,” she says. “But if it helps the bike go, it helps the bike go.”

She’s writing a pilot with HBO, based on I Was Told There’d Be Cake (“If you want to talk about being lucky, having HBO teach you how to write a pilot — it’s like, André Agassi is going to help me work on my forehand”). Now, she’s in the midst of a book tour. Crosley is at her best in How Did You Get This Number when she veers away from the twee. In Off the Back of a Truck, an essay she calls her most personal, she juxtaposes a harrowing breakup with a bizarre business arrangement she strikes up buying stolen luxury furniture.

“Almost everyone has the identical response to such behaviour: That sucks. How long were you dating?,” she writes. “This is, without exception, the first thing people want to know. Do they want to know if you have a right to your reaction? Are you to be dusted off and sent to play or rushed to the emergency room? They hang on to the math. Math, friend to so few in this life, is now like a shipment of cheese fries at fat camp.”

Crosley’s comfort with this sort of writing is apparent, and she’s glad of that.

“I sort of felt like a visitor in the land of narrative non-fiction anyway,” she says. “I feel like I’m just now taking off my coat, sitting down, staying a while, having a beer.”

Last night – I finally got to meet another one of my favorite writers, Sloane Crosley, at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca. With a reading – a short Q&A – followed by a book signing – I was in awe and inspired. Sloane read an excerpt from her newly released book of essays entitled, “How Did You Get This Number,” a witty, sarcastic book filled with hilarious fails, recounted memories of childhood and the every day.

She read from one of her essays entitled Light Pollution – and hilarious as it was – there were a couple lines she read that struck a cord – lines which I, as well as my friends, could relate to (and you know who you are).

“We quickly made the transition from amicable coworkers to voluntary friends [pg. 108]. . .  If you’re lucky enough to become truly close with a stranger in New York, there will still be a part of you and a part of them that’s reduced to novelty” [pg.111].

As Sloane signed my two copies of her books (I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number), I told her how much I loved her writing, and that back in my senior year of college – I nominated her for my English Department’s ‘Visiting Writer’s Series’  in which case she was voted #1 author  – however due to scheduling conflicts she could not make it to my school. She and I also exchanged New Jersey connections – which case in point – means we are bffs.

Fast-forward to my train-ride home, I started reading her book – but couldn’t move past her dedication page because I was laughing too loudly – which caused my fellow train-passengers to make annoyed faces at me – and as to avoid such looks I closed the book because I knew if I continued reading – I’d laugh even louder.

So, if you have never read Sloane Crosley or don’t understand how witty and funny she is – just read this excerpt from her dedication page. I promise you’ll want to pick up her book and start laughing:

To my parents. For Everything*

________________________________________

*Everything except the two-week period in 1995 directly following the time you went to Ohio for a wedding and I threw a party in the house, which is the most normal thing a teenage American can do, aside from lie about it, which I also did, and Mom eyed me suspiciously for days, morphing into a one-woman Scotland Yard, marching into my bedroom with a fistful of lint from the dryer to demonstrate that I had mysteriously washed all the towels, and then she waited until we were in a nice restaurant to scream, “Someone vomited on my couch, I know it!” and Dad took away my automotive privileges straight through college so that I spent the subsequent four years likening you both to Stasi foot soldiers, confined as I was to a campus-on-the-hill when I could have been learning how to play poker at the casinos down the road and making bad decisions at townie bars. I think we can all agree you overreacted.

For everything except that, I am profoundly grateful. I have only the greatest affection for you now. Also: I vomited on the couch.

-jo

Stieg Watch! Although the fourth volume in Stieg Larsson‘s bestselling Millennium Trilogy is still caught up in the late author’s estate wars, Swedish librarians have dug up some of his early short story efforts, rejected from a sci-fi magazine when Larsson was 17. Is it okay for us to be both excited and sort of embarrassed for him? (Note to the librarians of the future: please don’t publish any of our fiction from age 17 when we die.)

Sloane Watch! Essayist Sloane Crosley‘s new collection, How Did You Get This Number, came out on Tuesday. To further amp up the excitement, she’s teamed up with name-twin Sloane Tanen, whose hilarious chicken dioramas can be found in Bitter With Baggage Seeks Same and Going For the Bronze. Tanen’s given selected scenes from How Did You Get This Number the fuzzy yellow feather treatment—check them out here!

Shirt Watch! These literary tees sure are nifty—and they support a good cause. For every shirt sold, Out of Print Clothing donates a book to Books For Africa. Hey, so now you can look good and feel good at the same time!

And finally:

Saturday Watch! As in, you can come watch bestselling author Jennifer Egan read from and sign her new book, A Visit From the Goon Squad, at our Brentwood store this Saturday at 3 p.m. Check out the rave review Carolyn Kellogg of Jacket Copy gave Goon Squad in the L.A. Times.

I enjoyed her previous book, I Was Told There\’d Be Cake. It was funny and sharp, but she was so young. I dimly remember being that young. Crosley is obviously talented and IWTTBC is witty and edgy.

But sometimes I think the “edge” we laud so much in the arts lately reveals a kind of immaturity. You reach a certain point in life and uncomfortable + odd + kind of sad, no longer  =  funny.  Failings stop being something other people have and start to accumulate at the back of your dresser drawers – medals you wish you hadn’t gotten for coming through whatever you failed at still alive. Put another way, you become a bit of a sap.

Crosley’s new book has a depth and warmth you don’t see very often in personal essays. She’s less of a clown and much more funny than in her bestselling first collection. Her turn of phrase is sometimes startlingly elegant and always spot-on. And in How Did You Get This Number she doesn’t just make you laugh, she makes you think. HDYGTN comes out June 19th. Go out and get yourself one. I look forward to much more from this author.