The TBWCYL, Inc. 2009 Top Ten Lists are coming and today you get our Top Ten Books. No for real, you do. Just look below.

As there was much work travel and work furlough in 2009, there was much reading, hence we terribly excited to roll-out TBWCYL, Inc.'s 2009 Top Ten Books List, the first of our 2009 Top Ten lists, all of which we intend to post over the next couple of weeks. As with previous years, most of these books are from indie presses, which makes us happy, and many are written by friends, which makes us biased, though luckily, we love being biased almost as much as we love being self-absorbed. In terms of housekeeping, please note, that unlike our other end of the year lists, we do not limit ourselves to books published in 2009. Further, pretty much all of the following books were written about or blurbed here at This Blog Will Change Your Life, so, while we will keep the verbiage to a minimum today, we will be hyper-linking like there's no tomorrow. And who knows, maybe there won't be.

(1) Radiant Days/Michael A. Fitzgerald
(2) Stories/Scott McClanahan
(3) Big World/Mary Miller
(4) Dear Everybody/Michael Kimball
(5) Put Your Head in My Lap/Claudia Smith
(6) The Collectors/Matt Bell
(7) The Understory/Pamela Erens
(8) The National Virginity Pledge/Barry Graham
(9) When the Cats Razzed the Chickens & Other Stories/Mel Bosworth
(10) Conquering Venus/Collin Kelley

Some additional 2009 literary love (albeit in no particular order): Safelight/Shannon Burke, Full of It/Tim Hall, When I Moved to Nevada/Jamie Iredell, Bad Monkey/Curtis Smith, The Slide/Kyle Beachy, Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon/Hosho McCreesh and Christopher Cunningham, Some Things That Meant the World to Me/Joshua Mohr, Tranny/Steve Lafler, Fast Forward/Eric Spitznagel, You Must Be This Happy to Enter/Elizabeth Crane, Questionstruck/William Walsh, Talking Heads: 77/John Domini, Too Young to Fall Asleep/Sally Wiegel, Oh Baby/Kim Chinquee, One of These Things is Not Like the Others/Stephanie Johnson, The Complete Collection of People, Places & Things/John Dermot Woods, All the World's a Grave/John Reed.

And finally, for your retro viewing pleasure:

TBWCYL, Inc.'s 2008 Top Ten Books List

TBWCYL, Inc.'s 2007 Top Ten Books List

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Forty-Nine - "Decade."

It is Week Forty-Nine of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, our quite self-absorbed focus on posting one self-portrait per week for one year and this week we have been rocking the top movies, books, records and television shows of the decade at the TBWCYL, Inc. And it has been good. Hasn't it? We hope so. We also hope you have enjoyed following the project on the Flickr and that you might still consider hitting us with a self-portrait all your own that we can post right here on This Blog Will Change Your Life. That would be cool wouldn't it? Indeed.

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Forty-Five - "Trifecta."

It is Week Forty-Five of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, our wholly self-absorbed effort to post one self-portrait per week for one year. In fact, it has been quite a week for the increasingly massive TBWCYL, Inc. media empire. There has been a new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life, a new episode of This Podcast Will Change Your Life and now this, in other words, a rare TBWCYL, Inc. trifecta. Can you feel the love? We knew you could. Meanwhile, if you would like to follow this project in its entirety you may do so at the Flickr, and if you would like to see a self-portrait all your own here at This Blog Will Change Your Life just hit us with it. Cool? Nice.

New BFF Mel Bosworth rocks an excerpt from Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine. And changes lives. Many, many lives.

The ever cool, uber-published and quite handsome Mel Bosworth recently taped himself reading an excerpt from Most Likely Your Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine as part of his ongoing Mel Bosworth Reads Things video series and we are ridiculously appreciative. Many thanks Mel, and tea on us for sure when next we hit the New England. Meanwhile, please note, that this video kicks off an odd and upcoming flurry of attention for Most Likely and TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer, so please stay-tuned, well that, and keep it real. Cool?

A major announcement that we intend to file under why didn't we think of this sooner? Seriously, why didn't we? Weird.

Today we are officially launching the newest arm of TBWCYL, Inc., our ongoing and ever-expanding faux media empire and are happy to announce the birth of This Book Will Change Your Life. What does this mean for you? Not much, possibly. Or, maybe it will mean everything. We already endlessly review and blurb about books here, but during a recent TBWCYL, Inc. board meeting we thought why not (1) formalize and brand the reviewing and blurbage process and (2) give this process some sort of home it could call its own? Focus groups quickly showed us that doing so is good for staff morale and stakeholders confidence and are we not first and foremost all about staff morale and stakeholder confidence here? We are, along of course with hyping our products and name-dropping not just Elizabeth Crane, but Kendra Grant Malone as well, who recently referred to TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer as "pookie." Nice. Now, will anything change here on the ground, not really, but do we get to create a new division and continue building our brand equity. Totally. So, be on the look-out for the roll-out of This Book Will Change Your Life and feel free to contact corporate with any questions you may have. Cool? Excellent.

MONKEYBICYCLE subscription drive madness. And stuff.

The crew at MONKEYBICYCLE has always been quite good to us here at headquarters, running with a handful of pieces by TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer including It's Only Rock and Roll, But I Like It and A Short History of Happy New Years (and Not So Happy Endings), and so in return we want to take a moment to hype their big subscription drive this week. And there we've done it, so hit it. Thanks.

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Three - "Night."

It is week three of our unavoidable photo festival of rampant self-absorption, also know as This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life. This week our entry is titled "Night" and captures TBWCYL, Inc.'s spokesperson Ben Tanzer's mistaken belief that the children are asleep or will be soon. As always feel free to visit our ongoing collection of these self-portraits at the flickr and please don't hesitate to take advantage of our open-ended offer to run any self-portraits you might like to see of yourself here on the blog by sending us a photo at your most wonderfully narcissistic to thiszinewillchangeyourlife@yahoo.com.

Calling all book clubs. And you know who you are.

We are quite geeked to let you know that the awesomely lovable Orange Alert Press, publisher of Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine, is now offering group discount ordering and shipping rates to book clubs that choose Most Likely as a book club selection. Further, they are also prepared to send TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson and Most Likely author Ben Tanzer to any Chicagoland club that would like him to make an appearance to discuss the book, or really anything of interest to the club, including, but not limited, Scott Baio, Furries, Friday Night Lights, Yoda, RedTube, Pete Anderson, The Hold Steady, John Hughes, Dallas and/or Peeps. Nice, right? Way.

What do you do when you really really like someone, and even maybe idolize them a little bit, and then you meet them, and they don't seem to like you?

Well apparently if you are TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer and that person is Ira Glass you write a piece called Ira Glass Wants to Hit Me for decomP magazinE and then record that piece plus an interview for Apostrophe Cast. After that you ask people if they want to listen to it, which is actually what we are doing now. So, do you want to listen to it? Cool, thanks.

Orange Alert Press and TBWCYL, Inc. present The Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine interview - Check it out on YouTube.

No seriously, check it out, below, go ahead, it just might change your life.

Music and Politics and Wonka Vision #42.

You know, we don't spend a lot of time here at This Blog Will Change Your Life talking politics because frankly we don't see how doing so will increase sales. That said, today we are making a sort of exception because we are quite geeked about the next issue of Wonka Vision magazine where TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer is a staff writer. Issue #42 which is due out in August is not only dedicated to Music and Politics, but on the cover you will find among others, Billy Bragg, hands down one of our favorite artists here at TBWCYL, Inc. headquarters. We hope you will take a look at this most excellent issue, but more importantly we also hope you will consider supporting and hyping Wonka Vision, because it is not only quite cool, and quite well done, but this being a time period where we seem to be endlessly losing great magazines, journals and zines, we need to band together and take care of those who continue to exist despite the odds stacked against them. If all that isn't enough however, we also believe that Wonka Vision will likely change your life, if only briefly, which as you know, we tend to think is the coolest thing of all.

How cool - CCLaP: Chicago Center for Literature and Photography turns One!

We are very excited to let you know that our good friend Jason Pettus of CCLaP: Chicago Center for Literature and Photography is celebrating CCLaP's first anniversary this week. Among other things CCLaP is holding its first social event at the Printers Row Book Fair this Saturday, June 6th from 4:00pm - 7:00pm here in Chicago at Kasey's Tavern which is located at 701 South Dearborn. Another thing CCLaP is doing is running mini-profiles of friends and likely social event attendees on its blog and so after tooling around this most excellent arts and culture blog we also invite you to take a look at the profile of TBWCYL, Inc, spokesperson Ben Tanzer. Its not clear to us whether it will actually change your life, but we here at This Blog Will Change Your Life are contractually obligated to hype Ben at all times regardless. Thank you as always for your understanding and we hope to see you on Saturday.