Shameless, albeit much appreciated, Mellow Pages Library Lost in Space Tweet hype. And big thanks to the Mellow Pages Library for that.

"After that I began to cry a lot, but I still never saw my dad cry, not until he got sick." @BenTanzer @CurbsidePress #LostInSpace

— Mellow Pages Library (@MellowPagesBK) April 24, 2014

And then there was the time the Loren Kleinman and crew interviewed us about Lost in Space at Mellow Pages Library and I was totally, and absolutely, thankful for that.

And then there was the time that we locked arms with Paula Bomer to hype our new books at the Mellow Pages Library and all was right in the world. Or at least in Brooklyn anyway.

Dispatches from Space - Conversations and Connections, Three Tents, Mellow Pages Library, This Podcast Will Change Your Life, and Adam Lawrence.

Huge thanks to @dhousley for organizing the fun panel today with the fab. @raebryant and @BenTanzer and @DFoy! Smooches all around!
— Jessica Anya Blau (@JessicaAnyaBlau) April 6, 2014

"Apparently when you write about family, you're supposed to use pseudonyms-- I did not do that." - @BenTanzer of @GIGANTICsequins 4.2.
— kimberly southwick (@kimannjosouth) April 6, 2014

@BenTanzer just cracked up the bartender with essay about his son's bris. Maybe best compliment a reader can get.
— dave housley (@dhousley) April 6, 2014

Had my first real-time interview for #WhenIFirstHeldYou yesterday. Thanks @BenTanzer for a great conversation!
— Brian Gresko (@briangresko) April 7, 2014

And then there was the time we were Lost in Space release party and tour, with additional details still to come.

Like totally all of that we are, and will be, and all of it can be found here. Though in the interim, please do feel free to eyeball the below. Cool? Awesome, that, and we hope to see you somewhere soon.

LOST IN SPACE RELEASE PARTY
PUBLIC CHICAGO HOTEL
1301 N STATE PARKWAY
March 13th - 7:30 PM
FREE

featuring:
DMITRY SAMAROVauthor of HACK: Stories from a Chicago Cab
CHRISTINE SNEED
author of Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry and Little Known Facts 
MEGAN STIELSTRA
author of Everyone Remain Calm and Once I Was Cool
PATRICK WENSINK
author of Broken Piano for President
and the man of the hour, BEN TANZER!

Beginning March 8th, Ben will also be embarking on a Midwest / East Coast tour. See below for dates, locations, and times. 

March 8th

826CHI

1331 N. Milwaukee 

Chicago, IL

(with author Chris L. Terry & Bill Hillmann)

5:30 pm

also:

Uncharted Books

2630 N Milwaukee Ave. 

Chicago, IL

(with Chris L. Terry)

8:00 pm

March 29th

Literati Bookstore

124 E. Washington

Ann Arbor, MI 

(TBD)

April 5th

Three Tents Reading Series

The Big Hunt

1345 Connecticut Ave NW

Washington, D.C.

(7:00)

April 6th

Mellow Pages Library

56 Bogart St.

Brooklyn, NY

(TBD)

April 7th

with Gigantic Sequins

Philadelphia, PA

(TBD)

April 8th

Pen Parentis Reading Series

Andaz Hotel

75 Wall Street

New York, NY

7:00 pm

April 25th

Seminary Co-op

5751 S. Woodlawn

Chicago, IL

(with Bill Hillmann)

7:00 pm

April 30th

Maple Street Book Shop

7523 Maple Street

New Orleans, LA

(with Bill Hillmann)

6:00 pm

June 29th

Sunday Salon 

3614 N Damen

Chicago, IL

7:00 pm

These Things We Loved in 2013 Will Change Your Life.

It always starts with books, these posts, the year, our day, everything. And there other things, television, music, and movies. Though not enough, never enough. There are never even enough books. But here we are anyway, taking a moment to share what there is, and what there was, with you, now, totally.

Books by handsome men with facial hair, bearded, and otherwise.

The Map of the System of Human Knowledge/James Tadd Adcox, This Isn't Who We Are/Barry Graham, Here is How is Happened/Spencer Dew, League of Somebody's/Samuel Sattin, The Cost of Living/Rob Roberge, Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children/Dave Newman, Gripped/Jason Donnelly, Sightings/B.J. Hollars, We the Animals/Justin Torres, Gigantic Failures/Mark Cronin

Movies we are happy we got to see during a year that we did better than last year, but still didn't see enough to satisfy our movie Jones.

Before Midnight, Mud, Fruitvale Station, World War Z, Gravity, Dallas Buyer's Club, 12 Years A Slave, The Immigrant, American Hustle, Frances Ha

Movies we are happy we got to see because our children wanted us to.

Catching Fire, Iron Man III

And those we still hope to see.

Her, Stories We Tell, Nebraska, The Wolf of Wall Street, Captain Phillips, Springbreakers

Books published by Curbside Splendor that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them. 

MEATY/Samantha Irby, Zero Fade/Chris L. Terry, Tomorrowland/Joseph Bates

Books published by Artistically Declined Press that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them. 

Border Run/Shya Scanlon and A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst/Hosho McCreesh  

Books we had the pleasure to blurb and hope you have the pleasure to read.

Participants/Andrew Keating, Bad Kids from Good Schools/Michael Wayne Hampton, Why God Why/Matt Rowan, Commercial Fiction/Dave Housley, Blood a Cold Blue/James Claffey, sleep/David Tomaloff, The Last Great Halloween/Giano Cromley

Music, which we apparently listened to not much of this year, but we still listened to this.

Southeastern/Jason Isbell   

Music, we got to listen to live, which was way more than last year, that we quite dug. 

Ike Reilly/Schubas, Peekaboos/Empty Bottle, Killer Mike/Pitchfork 

Books by Chicago author Pete Anderson, because well, it's the Pete Anderson.

Wheatyard

Television shows we kept on watching, and we watched a lot of television this year, that got in the way of reading, thinking, and sometimes sleeping, but ultimately made us very happy.

Game of Thrones, Justified, Girls, The Walking Dead, Happy Endings, Mad Men, The Killing

Television shows we consumed because our older son said it must be so.

LOST

Television shows we finally started watching and consumed whole. 
 
Homeland, Breaking Bad

New television shows we happily consumed.

Orange is the New Black

Television shows from abroad that were not Downtown Abbey.

Top of the Lake, The Fall

Anthologies we gladly contributed to, and at times may have even edited.

Daddy Cool, Hairlit, Vol. 1, The 27th Mile, Multifesto: A Henri D' Mescan Reader (The Remix), Fried.Follow.Text., barcode

Collections, Short Story, and otherwise, by Chicagoans. And a novel.

The Temple of Air/Patricia Ann McNair, Decisions/Neil Kitterlin, Such Phantom/Rachel Hyman, The Blue Kind/Kathryn Born

Collections, Short Story, and otherwise, by non-Chicagoans. And a novel.

Shenanigans/Joseph Michael Owens, All the Roads That Lead From Home/Anne Leigh Parrish, Goodnight Nobody/Ethel Rohan, The Girlfriend Game/Nick Antosca, Understories/Tim Horvath, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe/Charles Yu

Memoir, or at least, Memoiresque, work.

Overthinking the Marathon/Ray Charbonneau, Crapalachia/Scott McClanahan 

Books by handsome men without facial hair, bearded, and otherwise.

The Infects/Sean Beaudoin, Fight Song/Joshua Mohr, Bones Buried in the Dirt/David S. Atkinson, Watering Heavan/Peter Tieryas Liu, Whiskey Pike and Turbo Tan/Jeff Phillips, Last Call in the City of Bridges/Salvatore Pane, [SIC]/Davis Schneiderman, Sad Robot Stories/Mason Johnson, Transubstantiate/Richard Thomas 

And most finally, there are many, many people to thank for this most rocking of years, and we are most definitely overlooking some, a lot maybe, and we apologize for that, here, now, but there you go.

Lauryn Allison, Mason Johnson, Matt Rowan, Jacob Knabb, Dave Housley, Jason Behrends, Leah Tallon, Anna March, Victor David Giron, Jason Pettus, Moeses Soulright, James Claffey, Nathan Holic, Ryan Bradley, Steve Lafler, Lavinia Ludlow, Rob Funderburk, Greg Olear,  William Walsh, J.A. Tyler, Ryan Singleton, John Barrios, Joseph G. Peterson, Tim Horvath, Cassandra Gillig, Michael Seidlinger, Adam Lawrence, Dave McNamara, Robert Martin, Mike Smolarek, Nik Korpon, Andrew Keating, Joseph Bates, Justin Lawrence Daugherty, Matty Byloos, Naomi Huffman, Brad Listi, Loren Kleinman, Michael Czyzniejewski, Myles and Noah Tanzer, Mel Bosworth, Benoit Lelievre, Emma Mae Brown, Tim Frederick, Todd Summar, Megan Stielstra, Hosho McCreesh, Kathryn Born, David S. Atkinson, Debbie Pritzker, Peter Schwartz, Jason Donnelly, Catherine Eves, BL Pawelek, James Yates, Brian Allen Carr, Seth Berg, James Goertel, Amber Sparks, Dan Coxon, Robert Vaughan, Jillian Lauren, Meg Tuite, Robert Duffer, Joseph Michael Owens, Carrie Lorig, Salvatore Pane, Sam Irby, Johnny Misfit, The Book Cellar, Michael Paige Glover, Jennifer Banash, City Lit Books, Judith Tanzer, Samuel Sattin, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Chris L. Terry, Ross McMeekin, Samuel Snoek-Brown, Mark Heineke, Mike Bushnell, Richard Thomas, Adam Tanzer, Patricia Ann McNair, xTx, James Tadd Adcox, Chris Oxley, Mellow Pages Library, Julia Borcherts, John Reed, NIU Press, Brian Gresko, Lori Hettler, Bill Hillmann, Don DeGrazia, Shawn Syms, Steve Karas, Cort Bledsoe, Barry Graham, Matt Micheli, Robyn Pennacchia, Jessi Lee Narducci, Matt Potter, Cari Luna, The Mooney's, Cyn Vargas, Russ Woods, Jeff Phillips, Steve Himmer, Sarah Lippman, Mikaela Shea Fowler, Giano Cromley, Zoe Zolbrod, Tom Williams, Joshua Mohr, Patrick Wensink, Mark Cronin, Davis Schneiderman, Ray Charbonneau, Gina Frangello, Rachel Hyman, Nick Ostdick, Scott McClanahan, Pete Anderson, the Tomaloff's, Paula Bomer, Wyl Vilacres, Brandon Will, the Knee-Jerk crew, J. Bradley, Jason Fisk, Pamela Erens

Orphans. Mellow Pages Library. The Brooklyn. Beautious. Totally.

(The) Orphans is coming to Brooklyn.

It's true. There is Orphans reading on November 30th, 7:30 pm, at the Mellow Pages Library and we would like you to join us.

There will be disco balls. Sparkly and true. Books. So many books. Words. Endless words.  Dogs and Cats living together. And rock star readers who are sure to change your life:

Joseph Riippi - Because, A Cloth House

John Reed - Tales of Woe, Snowball's Chance

Sara Lippmann - Sunday Salon, Girls Write Now

And TBWCYL, Inc. Spokesperson Ben Tanzer - Orphans, out now from Switchgrass Books and NIU Press, among others.

So please join us. Please spread the word. And please don't stop being you, because we think you are quite awesome at that.

Word.

We are Mellow Pages Library. More. And we feel fine.

Endlessly fine. More here. Much more.

You Can Make Him Like You is Mellow Pages Library. And we feel fine.

Quite fine. And more here. Lots more.