Results tagged “books”

It's a surprise any time an Emerson alumnus becomes something other than a barista or a textbook publisher, so let's give a golf clap to Emerson success story Joe Mande, the recently outed author of Look at This Fucking Hipster. The blog, which posts pictures and witty descriptions of ugly hipsters in outlandish poses, will be published as a book by St. Martin's Press. Considering the track record of books based on blogs, Look at This Fucking Hipster should be remaindered in time for the winter holidays.

B is for beer, not for boy? That’s right it is, and it’s about time someone acknowledged it. Tom Robbins, author of B Is for Beer, recognized the place for the superior beverage at the top of the alphabet. (Perhaps A is for alcohol.) Robbins’ small book is billed as “A children’s book for grown-ups” or “A grown-up book for children,” and to be honest it’s hard to tell which is more accurate. The book is supposedly written as though for a small child, but with plenty of winks to the adults who are actually reading it. However, the prose is clearly aimed at adults, but he writes to them as if they slipped back into first grade.

Saturday, April 25 through Sunday, April 26 The Muse and the Marketplace, Park Plaza Hotel (50 Park Plaza at Arlington Street) Sponsored by Grub Street What better way for you, a starving artist, to spend $320 than on a weekend of schmoozing with fellow writers, literary agents, publishers, and other folks guaranteed to help your book make it on a bestseller list? If this event can't make you a success, maybe you should just quit trying.

It's official: the Boston food industry crowd is in love with Craigie on Main, the newly expanded venture of Cambridge chef Tony Maws (formerly of Craigie Street Bistro). On a recent visit to the new space, this Bostonist spotted employees from Green Street, Eastern Standard, Dante and Drink bellying up to the bar. Here, wunderkind Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli, recently of Eastern Standard himself, was mixing up rye cocktails and housemade vermouths to rival any served at these other temples of mixology.

The Cambridge Chronicle reports that Harvard Book Store has begun shipping books to Cambridge and Boston using the Somerville bike messenger service Metro Pedal Power. They guarantee next-day delivery to seven zip codes in Cambridge and two-to-three day delivery to Boston. [Cambridge Chronicle]

Last night, Ted Sorenson -- JFK's "intellectual blood bank" -- spoke with former Clinton speechwriter Ted Widmer at the JFK Library about Kennedy's Inaugural.

In 1918, William Jennings Bryan predicted that "ten years from now, hundreds of thousands of men who voted against us and struggled to keep the saloon, will go down on their knees and thank God they were overwhelmed at the ballot-box and this temptation far removed from them."

7 p.m.

       

This Bostonist owns many a compact, black and white volume of cocktail recipes, with small type and bare diagrams. Mixologist, booze consultant, and Museum of the American Cocktail founder Dale DeGroff's new book is, by contrast, a large, typographically lush (and generally lush) book of cocktail recipes with near-pornographic photography of perfect drinks, shivering in their garnishes. The Essential Cocktail is lovely, and, if we learned anything from its launch party at Drink on Monday night, you should take its commands seriously, including its injunction to flame those orange peels.

* John Updike has published a sequel to The Witches of Eastwick, aptly titled, The Widows of Eastwick. He talks about it with The Guardian. [Guardian]

LUPEC Boston, the local chapter of that august sisterhood Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails, celebrates the second edition of their Little Black Book of Cocktails tonight at Grand. (Further details here—there will be punch!) The book features Matt Demers's photography, which makes Boston's most attractive bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts look like Louise Brooks, pearls and all. The book's proceeds will benefit the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans’ Women’s Unit.

Boston is a beer-drinking town. So if you’re new here or are just not a beer drinker (shame!) you might sit in a bar staring down fifteen brightly colored, alluring taps and find yourself utterly overwhelmed. We understand. Or, we’ll put up with it for a short period of time.

was offered to the world as a complete publication. The final book does, however, have a natural coherence, describing a single walking tour up the Cape to Provincetown, in which the sea provides a continual backdrop for his inner quest. As Thoreau moves from one small town to the next, the external world provides a form of spiritual direction, leaving the reader with as strong an impression of completeness as any of his other writings provides.

7:00 pm, free

McIntyre & Moore Booksellers, whose wunderkammer of used books was recently exiled from Davis Square (and long ago displaced from Harvard Square), reopened today in Porter Square, at 1971 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. (They're in good company here: Bob Slate—purveyor of fountain pens and rampant Moleskinery—and Stellabella Toys are right upstairs.)

Note: This reading is sold out, but there will be a standby line and open book signing after the reading.

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7:00 p.m., Brookline Booksmith

Brookline Booksmith

7:30 pm, free

The bimonthly token award ceremony to ease the existential trepidations of writers wide and far has once again taken place, this time under the supervision of the National Book Critics Circle who have announced their champions of 2007. The decision came after several days filled with bloodshed and crying while trying to sift through the many fine publications that popped out of the pervious year.

Tears and sorrow fill the offices of mainstream publisher Riverhead books as another memoir delivered from the school of hard knocks turns out to be a complete fabrication. Love and Consequences, a memoir released last week by Margaret Seltzer (published under the silly pseudonym Margaret B Jones), which chronicles the author's difficult life story of foster families, drug running, and all around thuggin' on the mean streets of L.A., turns out to be a complete bowl of lies.

This past Monday French avant garde novelist and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet died at the age of 85. Robbe-Grillet is regarded as the theorist behind the "new novel", which rejects conventional storytelling techniques for surface narratives that focus on objects and details rather than the world at large. Truly, he could suck a story out of an electric shaver like no other.