On the Eve of the Eve of the Brooklyn Book Festival

September 16, 2011 5 Comments

Decisions, decisions. Here’s where I tell you about my grand and epic plans to DO ALL THE THINGS at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday! (or not) Not surprisingly there are so many authors I want to see that there’s some overlap and I’ve had to make some tough decisions based on whether or not I’m able to see a particular author later on in the month/year. Please note that for each event, I’ve only named the authors I’m interested in seeing. See complete details at the website.*

10:00 AM: Laugh Your Head Off. Libba Bray.
Most likely the above event, it sounds way more fun and a good way to kick things off, but I won’t completely rule out this one: At the End of the Story [TIX REQ] w/ A.M. Homes and Nicole Krauss.

11:00 AM: Undecided/Nothing.

12:00 PM: Epic Confusion. Chuck Klosterman and Sam Lipsyte.
This one is sort of take it or leave it for me. Wish the Kate Beaton event could have been at this time.

1:00 PM: Writer as Illusionist. Steven Millhauser and Emma Straub.
I’m actually surprised to see Emma Straub on this panel… I don’t recall anything particularly fantastical in her short stories. This is during the time of the Kate Beaton even by the way. HEAVY, DRAMATIC SIGH

2:00 PM: Dangerous Laughter. Karen Russell, Elissa Schappell, Rob Spillman.
there’s an event going on with Esmeralda Santiago going on at this time that I think my mom would like to go to. Perhaps we will part ways at this time. I want her to enjoy herself too! Also I find it somewhat ironic that Dangerous Laughter is also the name of a Steven Millhauser collection, yet he’s not a part of this panel.

3:00 PM: Starring: the City
no authors listed because I’m actually more interested in the topic for this one

4:00 PM: Truth versus Memory [TIX REQ]. Myla Goldberg and Téa Obreht.

5:00 PM: Unholy Paths to Redemption. Jennifer Egan.
Though I got my copy of A Visit from the Goon Squad signed at the Brooklyn Book Festival last year I didn’t actually hear Ms Egan speak because I was in a panel about memoirs, moderated by Elizabeth Wurtzel (!!!!). So I guess it’d be nice to hear her speak this time around even though I’m still mad at Goon Squad..

In addition to the Festival itself, there are what they call “Book End Events,” which actually began yesterday. I’m hoping to go to tonight’s Brooklyn Indie Party! at Greenlight Bookstore. A Public Space, Archipelago Books, Black Balloon, BOMB Magazine, Electric Literature, Melville House, Tin House, Ugly Duckling Presse, and many others will be in attendance and there will be music, food, and drinks. After the Festival on Sunday, there is a Brooklyn Book Festival Closing Night Party at the Brooklyn Bowl which is nowhere near Borough Hall where the Festival is held! It’s actually near McCarren Park Pool where I attended my first Regina Spektor concert. I love how the public transportation directions on Google Maps involve going back into Manhattan to catch the L train.

*One thing I really don’t like about the Events Listing is that they’re only organized by location and not by time? Time would have helped in terms of deciding, I had to keep scrolling up and down. Not exactly ideal. I understand the usefulness of organizing by location (because some events are ticketed, and that is dependent on the location), but another viewing option would have been much appreciated.

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Book Review: Other People We Married

April 1, 2011 3 Comments

Title: Other People We Married
Author: Emma Straub
Format: trade paperback
Publisher: Five Chapters
Pub Date: Jan 2011
Read: Mar 2011
Purchased: Jan 2011, at the Launch Party at BookCourt
Why: I first discovered Emma Straub via twitter. She is, if you didn’t already know, one of the nicest authors in the twitterverse and in real life too it would seem.
Fulfills Challenge? yes (3)
Notes: N/A
Review/Thoughts:
So here’s the deal — I wanted to like this collection a lot more than I actually did.

I feel the collection can basically be summed up in the following way: unhappy people in unhappy relationships doing very little to change their unhappy circumstances. In some ways I suppose this is a reflection of life. How often do people really do anything to change their circumstances? I can appreciate that to some extent, however, I also began to feel the stories ended too soon (perhaps because very little had changed over the course of the story). Most of them seemed to be lacking that essential moment that makes for a really good short story. The moment where our perception of the situation changes along with the character’s or a gun goes off without warning shocking the reader from their place of complacency. These stories didn’t really have much of that. This is a quiet, somewhat sullen collection of stories, most of which aren’t very memorable because there seems to be a single underlying situation in all of them (meaning they all start to blend together after a while).

Oh, that sounds so much harsher than intended. Let’s move on to some of the positives. The writing is solid, deceptively simple and straightforward. I enjoyed “Pearls” and “Fly-Over State” the most, and I was happy to see the collection end on a more positive note with “Hot Springs Eternal.” I’d be interested in seeing recurring character, Franny Gold, appear in more stories (preferably without her jerk of a husband). I also think Straub’s writing is good enough to check out future works of hers. Her novel was picked up by Riverhead Books, so we’ll probably be seeing that sometime next year. I’ll give it a go if the plot seems interesting.

Straub’s style has been compared to Lorrie Moore’s so perhaps fans of Lorrie Moore should give this a try. I haven’t actually read Moore, so I can’t properly judge. Just throwing it out there.

Final Verdict:

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Other People We Married Book Party & Reading @ BookCourt, 27 Jan 2011

January 28, 2011 Leave a Comment

Emma Straub is apparently a minor literary celebrity. That much is clear to me having attended her book party at BookCourt last night. Either that, or BookCourt is known for some damn good parties and bookish fiends everywhere were looking to get down. But I suspect the main draw was Emma herself, who is an absolute delight.

The party was of course to celebrate the launch of Emma Straub’s new collection of short stories, Other People We Married, put out by Five Chapters. Emma also works at BookCourt, so it was the natural choice to host a book launch party. You could feel the warmth and support of her co-workers. Her co-worker Adam Wilson gave a warm, funny, and all-around awesome introduction.

Emma read a few pages from the second story in her collection entitled “Rosemary,” which is also featured in Issue #1 of Cousin Corinne’s Reminder, a lit journal put out by BookCourt. Claiming the story was “a bit of a downer,” she also chose to read a personal essay about her love of Joey McIntyre and her experience attending one of his recent concerts (2007). It was a funny piece and a great choice to end the reading. Afterward, she signed books. I hurried onto the line, which was forming quickly, and ended up third or fourth. As I stepped up to the podium, she immediately recognized me as that girl sitting two seats away from her who didn’t say hi (I had tweeted about my own skittishness at saying hello), and then she left a lovely message in my book. That brings my total to two lovely messages in one week!

I left shortly afterward, but not before taking a (blurry cellphone) shot of the cake!

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