Eggers. Ellen. Stalking.

Hero worship is tough. Celebrity love is confusing. And our current intensely ramped-up focus on pop culture and stardom is crushing. Which leaves us fairly intrigued by the reaction to the Elizabeth Ellen Bookslut essay on her time "Stalking Dave Eggers," no less so now that she has reported that his people have asked her to take it down. We're not sure if the essay is honest, brave or scintillating, nor even what may or may not be true, but that doesn't matter, not really, the feelings expressed are something anyone can relate to, everyone has gone through a hard time, and messed-up relationships and when we do, what we want more than anything is to connect to someone, or something, and so why not Dave Eggers? He's out there, but not exactly, he seems approachable and exposed, yet not, he has a gift for language and a desire to give and who doesn't want to be around that, even if you can never quite be around that? Everyone. Meanwhile, as someone wrote at Vol. 1 Brooklyn, "Who the fuck hasn't stalked Dave Eggers?" No one. It's his world now and we all want a brief taste of it.

TBWCYL, Inc.'s Top Ten Books of the Decade Will Change Your Life.

Are we jumping on the decade-ending bandwagon? Way. Still, when your goal is to change lives, its not always clear how you're going to accomplish this. So, as we began prepare our year-end Top Ten lists we started thinking about the last decade as well and like everybody else we thought we would weigh-in on what we liked and/or influenced us and/or brought us joy. Over this week we are going to hit books, movies, television and music. And then next week, or shortly thereafter, we will begin rolling-out our year-end lists. Cool? Great.

(1) Cruddy by Lynda Barry (2000). There is maybe no book other than The Basketball Diaries that we aspire to writing more.

(2) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (2000). Fathers, sons, pain. And killer graphics.

(3) American Skin by Don De Grazia (2000). Quite simply, we read this and we believed we could write the book that would become Lucky Man.

(4) Radiant Days by Michael A. Fitzgerald (2007). A debut novel like few others. All hail the Fitzgerald.

(5) Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Nico Henrichon (2006). War is hell. And then some.

(6) Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno (2004). Compulsively readable and we don't care what Jason Pettus thinks about that.

(7) Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman (2004). Pop culture as an endlessly humorous intellectual exercise.

(8) Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel (2006). Uhhhm, wow.

(9) When The Messenger is Hot by Elizabeth Crane (2004). Short stories, slamming and true, not to mention the inspiration for the delightful Ms. Crane becoming the long-time muse for this blog.

(10) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (2000). Too good. We never understood why people hate on the Eggers and we still don't.

The next twelve (in no particular order): Vacation by Jeremy Shipp (2007), Breaking it Down by Rusty Barnes (2007), Black Flies by Shannon Burke (2008), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000), Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball (2008), Half Empty by Tim Hall (2004), Stories by Scott McClanahan (2008), The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli by Ginetta Correli (2008), Three Fallen Women by Amy Guth (2006), Bughouse by Steve Lafler (2001), The Love Book by Ken Wohlrob (2007), Talk: A Novel in Dialogue by Corey Mesler (2002).

And finally, as we worked on this list we were struck by how many of these books came out around 2000 and that there was even some other work we hoped we would be able to include such as Naked by David Sedaris (1998) and Meditations from a Movable Chair by Andre Dubus (1999) that as turns out came out just prior to the new Millenium. But then it hit us, we started writing around 1999 and during those first few years as we tried to find some traction many of these authors pointed the way and gave us hope, not because we thought we could be as good as them, but because what they wrote about spoke to us and spoke to what we hoped to write ourselves.

Good stuff.

Dave Eggers loves us enough to write. Okay, that may be strong, but he does want to "buck us up." Pretty cool, yes? Yes.

You may recall that we were quite taken with Dave Eggers offer to "buck-up" anyone feeling down by the current state of books and book love. You may also recall that we said we would write him and ask to be "bucked-up" and then report his response to you. Well, you will be happy to know that we kept up our end of the deal and he did as well. Fairly cool, we think, and while we are not going to share the entirety of the response here, or anywhere really, here is an excerpt:


Dear Person Needing Bucking Up,

Hello and thank you so much for writing. I feel honored that you would take the time to reach out and in many cases tell me your very real struggles with writing and work and the future of the printed word.

I have a few thoughts to share, though unfortunately in this space I can't detail all the reasons I think we have a fighting chance at keeping newspapers and books alive in physical form. But before I do blather for a few paragraphs, I should apologize for sending you a mass email.

As you probably know, in May I gave a speech to about 100 people in New York, and I didn't foresee it getting out there on the web. (Shows how much I know.) And I really didn't expect this email address to be given out.

Again, though, that was my lack of foresight. And I'm an infrequent emailer, so I'm unable to respond to most of the (plaintive, beautiful, heart-ripping) emails that have been sent to me these past few days. So I apologize for not being able to answer your email personally. Or at least not in any timely manner.

Anyway. I would like to say to you good print-loving people that for every dire bit of news there is out there, there is also some good news, too. The main gist of my (rambling) speech at the Author's Guild was that because I work with kids in San Francisco, I see every day that their enthusiasm for the printed word is no different from that of kids from any other era.

Reports that no one reads anymore, especially young people, are greatly overstated and almost always factually lacking. I've written about youth readership elsewhere, but to reiterate: sales of young adult books are actually up. Total volume of all book sales is actually up. Kids get the same things out of books that they have before. Reading in elementary schools and middle schools is no different than any other time. We have work to do with keeping high schoolers reading, but then again, I meet every week with 15 high schoolers in San Francisco, and all we do is read (literary magazines, books, journals, websites, everything) in the process of putting together the Best American Nonrequired Reading. And I have to say these students, 14 to 18 years old, are far better read and more astute than I was at their age, and there are a million other kids around the country just like them.

As we said, fairly cool yes? Way. Long live the Eggers.

Yet another thing we may have in common with Dave Eggers and one thing he will do for you that hadn't occurred to us.

We have been thinking a lot lately about the status of books and even sounding off on this occasionally, for example our recent interview with Chicago Subtext, because from what we can tell people think books are dieing and on their way out. We are not so sure though. Traditional publishing houses are certainly hurting, distributors are disappearing, book review sections in newspapers are endlessly being trimmed, and even cut, and then there is that whole Kindle thing. And yet, great books are getting written all the time and indie publishers are publishing them and as a whole some chunk of the reading public are finding these books, and loving them, even if the numbers are smaller and writers need to scramble more than ever to get their work out there. So, no, its not clear to us that books are dieing as much as the traditional and mainstream model of publishing books is doing so. We believe people will always want to publish books, and will always find ways to do so, because its not just a business for most, its a love of books, holding them in your hands, sticking them in your pocket, looking at them on your shelf, crafting them, and on and on. Now, what's prompting this particular diatribe at this particular moment in time is a post we stumbled onto at the most excellent Baby Got Books where they had linked to an interview with Dave Eggers at the Guardian in which he not only says much of the above more eloquently than we do, but where he also went so far as to say that people who need bucking up regarding the state of books should e-mail him at deggers@826national.org and he would be happy to write them. We love this, and while we are not aware of anyone who has e-mailed him yet, we plan to and will share the results with you when we do, because while we love books, a lot, we love you even more.