1. Booksculpting. I recently culled a few bags of books from my collection; call it Spring Cleaning. They're now sitting by the front door, watching me as I come and go, accusing. It's very uncomfortable. I try to tell them that they're going to good homes--to be loved by good, careful readers. They say: "We do not want the mediocrity of the home-bookshelf. We want immortality!" So maybe I'll send them to Alicia Martin for one of her book installations.

Books can be so pushy...

especially fiction.

2. Fiction Addiction. "Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters.  Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life."

Read the rest of this op-ed from the New York Times, which offers scientific evidence that reading fiction makes us better human beings. 

3. The Conversational Stylings of Evison and Mohr. Jonathan Evision, author of West of Here, and Joshua Mohr, author of Damascus, came to Diesel, Oakland for a chat and I caught it on film at a rather odd angle. They cover such sundry topics as bodybuilding, Bigfoot hunting, and the health benefits of acid, so, maybe the camera angle is appropriate, I don't know.