Much love to TBWCYL, Inc. favorite and overlord of all things Orange Alert Jason Behrends for the much appreciated review of You Can Make Him Like You he has posted to Chicago Subtext and Goodreads. Coffee on us for sure when next we meet and excerpt for everyone else. Also, and we are speaking to those of you who qualify as "everyone else," we have a request - if you are digging the You Can Make Him Like You, and we hope you are, please do consider posting a shout-out to Goodreads, Amazon and anywhere else shout-outs are sold, because that too will be much appreciated.
"Essentially, Tanzer is exposing the secret inner thoughts of a man as he tries to adopt, grow, move at a reasonable pace through life. At times you relate, and at others you are shocked and embarrassed. This is a honest look at the process every father goes through on some level. It shows the importance of friends, family, and even a good life soundtrack."
Orange Alert maestro and long-time friend, supporter and champion of all things indie and literary Jason Behrends is now rocking the Chicago Subtext and has a quite nice shout-out for the upcoming Torn Pages show at the OhNo!Doom Collective space. There are also quotes from contributor and TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer and Dominique Holmes the artist he was paired with among others which we are way digging to say the least.
"The first stories we are exposed to are children's stories and so in a way this show is an illumination of our earliest influences. It is also quite fascinating to see an artist's interpretation of your work. I may have some ideas about what I think the story looks like in my head, but the artist has their own set of influences and these influences impact their reading of the story, something I find very cool, and especially so in this case, because the artist illustrating my piece is Dominique Holmes, a former neighbor of mine, whose work I really like, but who I only sort of know."
"I am eager to see how the show will come together, whether these adult narratives masquerading as children's stories will lean towards whimsy or menace. Ben trusted me. He handed over his story like the baton in a relay race and I took off, breakneck, exuberant, and to some extent defiant."
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.
The always and endlessly lovely Amy Guth, she of Bigmouth Indeed Strikes Again blog fame, the wonderfully not humorous novel Three Fallen Women, Pilcrow Lit Fest awesomeness and a recent edition of This Podcast Will Change Your Life, in which she almost announced something big, has a quite cool new gig, and literary blog, which we can now officially let you know about. The blog is called Chicago Subtext, it is focused on all things literary here in our very own Chicago and we think you will want to check it out. We also think it just may change your life. And we definitely think that either way you get to spend some quality time with la Guth which is always a good thing.
Much love to TBWCYL, Inc. favorite and overlord of all things Orange Alert Jason Behrends for the much appreciated review of You Can Make Him Like You he has posted to Chicago Subtext and Goodreads. Coffee on us for sure when next we meet and excerpt for everyone else. Also, and we are speaking to those of you who qualify as "everyone else," we have a request - if you are digging the You Can Make Him Like You, and we hope you are, please do consider posting a shout-out to Goodreads, Amazon and anywhere else shout-outs are sold, because that too will be much appreciated.
