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I am reading this right now and I wholeheartedly concur. 

Station Eleven

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Also, you don’t pronounce the h in honor. 

whenever an american pronounces herb as ‘urb’ it shocks me. do you say elp as well instead of help or like air instead of hair or like umour instead of humour wtf the h is there for a reason

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I am so freaking sad to be missing this. I literally have to drop stuff off at Comic-Con on Wednesday, but don’t get to attend...and I have to go out of town on Friday, which means, I can’t go to the Nerd HQ Panels or the Meet Up. If you need me, I’ll be drawing in tears...in the ballpit, of course. 

ORPHAN BLACK at 2015 SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE

FRIDAY, July 10

IDW Orphan Black Comic Book Signing WHEN: 11am – 12pm WHERE: Booth #2743, San Diego Convention Center WHO: Graeme Manson & John Fawcett WHAT: Creators Graeme Manson & John Fawcett will be joined by OB comic book writer Jody Houser and illustrator Cat Staggs for a comic book signing. Click HERE for more info! 

Orphan Black Nerdist Conival  WHEN: 2 – 2:15pm WHERE: Petco Park, 100 Park Blvd. WHO: Tatiana Maslany, Ari Millen, Jordan Gavaris, Dylan Bruce, Kristian Bruun, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Graeme Manson, John Fawcett WHAT: A live, on-stage interview with the creators and cast of Orphan Black. Click HERE for more info! 

EW’s Brave New Warriors Panel with Jordan Gavaris WHEN: 4 – 5pm WHERE: Hall H, San Diego Convention Center WHO: Jordan Gavaris WHAT: Lynette Rice moderates a panel featuring male heroes from various genre TV shows, including Jordan Gavaris (FEEEEeeeEee!), Zachary Levi (Heroes Reborn), Sam Heughan (Outlander), Kevin Durand (The Strain), Rob Kazinsky (The Frankenstein Code) and Michael Cudlitz (The Walking Dead). Click HERE for more info! 

BBC America’s Orphan Black Panel WHEN: 5:45 – 6:45pm WHERE: Room 6BCF, San Diego Convention Center WHO: Tatiana Maslany, Ari Millen, Jordan Gavaris, Dylan Bruce, Kristian Bruun, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Graeme Manson, John Fawcett WHAT: Unquestionably the best panel at San Diego Comic-Con, with the best creators & cast on television, hosted by the best moderator to ever moderate, Retta. *Mic drop.* Click HERE for more info! 

SATURDAY, July 11

Orphan Black #CloneClub Fan Meetup: Alison’s Victory Brunch WHEN: 10am – 12pm WHERE: House of Blues, use the entrance on 1056 6th Ave. WHO: Surprise guests! WHAT: Come celebrate Alison’s campaign win in an EPIC #CloneClub San Diego meetup, complete with Fee photo booth, eye patch bedazzling, and MORE. Click HERE for more info! 

Nerd HQ: The Men of Orphan Black WHEN: 2 – 3pm WHERE: Nerd HQ: The New Children’s Museum, 200 W Island Ave. WHO: Ari Millen, Kristian Bruun, Jordan Gavaris and Dylan Bruce WHAT: Nerd HQ: Conversations for a Cause is an awesome San Diego panel series & pop culture convention presented by Zachary Levi and The Nerd Machine. All ticket proceeds go to Operation Smile! At last year’s panel, Kristian showed everyone his underwear. Click HERE for more info! 

All Orphan Black SDCC Events, All the Times, All the Days WHEN: Thursday at dawn ‘til Sunday at dusk WHERE: Internet WHO: OBTumbs, OBTwitter, OBInsta, and bbcamerica_tv snapchat WHAT: If we could, we would cram everyone in #CloneClub into a compact carry-on and take you all to San Diego. Instead, we’re offering the next best thing: Giving YOU insider access to ALL-THINGS OB SDCC online! Follow us and we promise you’ll feel like you’re really there.* We’ll be tumblring the panels live, tweetin’ BTS pics, watching helplessly as cast steal our phones and hijack OB instagram, etc. It’ll be great! 

*For a truly authentic San Diego Comic-Con experience at home, wait 5 hours in an imaginary line and then follow us.

[reviewsfromafulltimebookeditor]

Dear God yes!

WHEN A MALE NARRATOR MENTIONS A FEMALE CHARACTER’S BREASTS EVERY TIME THEY INTERACT

It’s just like:

[reviewsfromafulltimebookeditor]

Accurate.

A bookworm saying he or she is on a book buying ban means it like -17%

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Self-promotion. This is my company and it is awesome. Check out what we’ve done with the audio vinyl. 

Check out this exclusive audio excerpt from the first of Rare Bird’s new vinyl audiobook series!

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Hi :) I'm 18 years old and I'm interested in editing and publishing. I hope to get a job as a book editor someday. I am currently majoring in English at a university, but I am having doubts about whether I will get a chance at my desired profession. I was hoping that you could perhaps tell me a bit about the job and how one could get a foot in the door. Anything would be extremely helpful. I understand if you can't, though. Thank you very much for your time :)

Gah! I totally missed this somehow. I’m so sorry I kept you waiting. 

So here’s the deal, I fell into publishing ass-backwards, even though it was what I wanted to do. I was working in TV and took a job at a bookstore to make extra money. I only worked there on weekends. The events department liked me so they had me help out on weeknights when I could, and then when the Events Coordinator’s assistant left, he took me on as his assistant. Then a few years later he left and started the company I work at now and hired me. So yeah, there’s no way I could have planned that. 

That being said, here’s my advice. Be around books. Do things with books. Even if you need to have a job that isn’t a bookstore or a publisher, run a podcast about books, run a book blog, make connections with people who work with books. All jobs, all careers are all about having those connections. People like people who are passionate, who put their time and effort into doing something. That gets you noticed. 

Hope that helps! Again, sorry for the delay. 

xo, 

Editor

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The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

Terry Pratchett

  (via homovikings)

God yes! 

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Oof. Right in the feels. 

Helen Macdonald at Greenlight Bookstore, 4/8/15

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These are my best friend from high school’s parents. And they are really rad. 

Today’s Miniature Monday is a #secretsmw post for Museums Week.

This can hides secrets - a miniature book from Peter and Donna Thomas.  Ours is unopened so I can’t show you the book inside.  However, another library collection opened theirs and filmed the opening, so you can click over there to see what the book looks like inside, if you prefer for it to be less mysterious.

An excerpt from John Steinbeck’s Cannery row.  Santa Cruz [Calif.] : Peter & Donna Thomas, 2003. PS3537.T3234 C32 2003, Charlotte Smith Miniature Collection.

Other books from Peter and Donna Thomas we have featured.

See all of our Miniature Monday posts.

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I just can't seem to drink you off my mind

The Rolling Stones

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Cover Boobs

So I'm not really a prudish person. Particularly when it comes to nudity. I'm from the land of nudist parents and nude beaches and naked running in the rain (Porter College, UCSC, Class of 2005!). So I never noticed that the cover of The Royal Family has three women on the cover, two of whose breasts are showing. 

  First off, can I just say, mad props to penguinrandomhouse (just Penguin at the time) for putting this on a book cover. I feel like not a lot of publishers would not have the guts to put nipples on a cover, even the cover of a book about prostitutes. So Bravo guys! Good job. 

That being said, you should see the looks I get on the subway reading this book. I wish I had a spy camera so I could capture the faces for you guys. From the lecherous glances to the scandalized looks, you'd think that people who live in the 2nd largest city in America would see some boobs and be like, 'whatever,' but that doesn't seem to be the case. 

I'm scandalizing the Los Angeles subway riders...and I relish every second of it. 

[reviewsfromafulltimebookeditor]

Review: So Far

I feel like I've done nothing but talk about the experience of taking on this weird little project of mine. One of my goals in doing this project is to be able to really wrap my mind around what's happening in a longer novel like this and to bring out any deeper meanings. 

It's funny, I feel like I spent most of my college career reading and searching for meaning, doing close readings of 'important' novels, assessing their merits in a socio-historical context. I feel like I spend most of my time as an editor making sure shit makes sense, making sure that grammar and punctuation is correct, that everything is Chicago 16 compliant. 

I rarely get to sit with a novel, to really think about what it means to me. When I was a teenager, gobbling up Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat series, laying in my mess of a room with some scratchy punk rock record blaring, feeling like Stephen Chbosky—and his incredible Perks of Being A Wallflower—was the only person who really got me. Back then, reading was ALL emotion. The world was full of new experience, and books were the way out of a small town. 

The Royal Family, like all of William Vollmann's books, is a visceral experience. Shoving your face into the rotten crotch of San Francisco's Tenderloin, a neighborhood that for so long, the majority of Bay Area residents avoided at all costs, Vollmann finds humanity. I've always been attracted to this about Vollmann's writing. His ability to find humanity where we so often forget there is any. 

I know the book itself is an allegory to? a retelling of? Cain and Abel, but biblical references are not my strong suit. I will say this. It's a compelling read. My critical engagement skills may be a bit lacking at the moment, but I'm fascinated by Vollmann's ability to find the beauty in the dirty motels and back alleys of the Tenderloin—a neighborhood that seems like it may vanish in the next 10 years or so. The Royal Family shows why that trajectory would be such a tragedy for these underground denizens of San Francisco. And for that, I'm loving it.

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The Time Crunch

So what I've found out on my endeavor of reading huge books is that this shit takes a lot of time. I mean, that might seem obvious, but I'm a fast reader and I read a lot. 

This project though, has forced me to reassess my time management skills. Of course, it's January, so that means that we have a crop of books going to the printer in my office and I have to do final copy edits on all of those, so I'm reading a bit more than usual. Still, I've found myself having to carve out a few hours on Saturday mornings or Sunday nights or Saturday nights or Friday nights (because, let's face it, I'm a nerd, and I hate going out when everyone else is out), to just sit and read. My usual I read for 20 minutes on the subway ride to work and 20 minutes on the subway ride home way of plowing through literature just isn't cutting it. 

Still, I've found myself watching less TV, spending less time on the internet, and, as soon as it stops raining in LA, I'm going to need to find some outdoor reading space where I can lounge for a few hours and really just sit with my book. 

In other news, I'm loving the book. I've always loved Vollmann's prose. He's unafraid to write about some of the more stomach-churning points in life, and he's bringing me back to a San Francisco that was destroyed by the immigration of tech people out of San Jose (I'm from Santa Cruz, and thus refer to San Jose as the entire area between Los Gatos and Daly City) and into the city. 

STATUS: Page 101 (I know, it's ridiculous, and I'm monumentally behind).

EMOTIONAL STATUS: Happy, but tired (though that has nothing to do with my reading endeavor).

Until next time,

Julia

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Donna   San Francisco has changed both rapidly and radically over recent years. As it’s become more appealing both for cosmopolitan urbanites and the exploding tech sector, gentrification has blessed The City by the Bay with the most expensive one-bedroom apartment in America, even surpassing New York. Many mourn the loss of an earlier San Francisco and its formerly affordable counterculture and queer subculture, while San Francisco documentary photographer and filmmaker James Hosking manages to actually catch some of the twilight. For his series, Beautiful by Night, Hosking documents the lives of three senior drag queens Donna Personna, Collette LeGrande and Olivia Hart, performers at aunt Charlie’s Lounge, the very last gay bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The notoriously seedy Tenderloin has managed to mostly resist gentrification on the merits of its reputation and a concerted effort by inhabitants. Still, without the surrounding culture of a former San Francisco to sustain it, the once vibrant queer scene has faded. Hosking’s photographs are intimate and unflinching, but the mini-documentary is also an amazing portrait of three drag foremothers. Their reflections and reminiscing are complex but disarmingly at peace, and their performances and beauty rituals are (as...

I don't want to be one of those curmudgeonly Bay Area natives that constantly talks about how tech fucked up San Francisco, but in reading The Royal Family there is a bit of nostalgia for how The City used to be. It was the city that I dreamt about when I was stuck in a small town, ditching class and spending every dime I had just trying to get to San Francisco as often as possible. 

The people in San Francisco were interesting, they were vibrant, they were creative, they had lived. Whether walking through the Castro, the Tenderloin (where The Royal Family takes place), SoMa, or North Beach, there were people like me. People who craved late nights and intellectual conversation, who were equally at home discussing Faulkner and Beverly Hills, 90210. 

For me, San Francisco was a lifeline, it reminded me of what awaited once I could get out of my small town. I see things like this movie about the last gay bar in the Tenderloin (!!!), depicting, much like Vollmann's novel, those that are left to the fringes of society, and I miss that San Francisco. I miss the place where I could go to Orphan Andy's at 4 am and find it brimming with people that didn't all look exactly alike. I miss walking through the Tenderloin not knowing if I was going to get yelled at for not giving a drug addict money as I walked by. I miss Happy Donuts on 4th and King, where I would by coffee at 4:00 am before heading to work at Pier 45. 

I miss that San Francisco. I miss the dive bars that were real dives. I miss the liquor stores that sold to me under age. I miss drinking on the steps to Grace Cathedral. I miss the Lusty Lady. I miss the grit of a San Francisco that is quickly fading. 

I miss it all. 

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My literary new year’s resolution is to read slower. I want to try and re-discover the kind of reading where you savor every page instead of thinking about unread emails, progress through the book, progress through the to-be-read pile, and the quantity of remaining tea bags in cupboard.

The new year is, of course, a time for resolutions, and Electric Literature has collected literary resolutions from Alexander Chee, Year in Reading alum Emily Gould, Yelena Akhtiorskaya,and many more. Coming out of the hectic holiday season, this resolution from Jonathan Lee seems particularly apt. (via millionsmillions)

This is kind of my philosophy for My Year of the Tome. I often feel like I'm either editing, which is a whole different kind of reading, or skimming books because I feel like I need to read them, but I also need to watch Breaking Bad because I'm so behind, and oh yeah, I'm behind on Game of Thrones and hey, Jeopardy is on.