Last night's storm was a bit of a 'dud' from an accumulation standpoint, but I wasn't disappointed because I had made arrangements to sign books at Crawford Doyle -- a very charming independent bookstore on the Upper East Side -- and I didn't want miss it. I asked Thomas, the manager of the store, if they maintained a FB/Twitter/Tumblr, and somewhat awesomely he shuddered and confessed that they did not; moreover, as time passes, he's becoming increasingly resistant to the idea. I love the internet in many ways, but because I also don't love it in many others, I felt obliged to compliment his Luddite tendencies. 'I h8 FB,' I responded and not without truth; it's not so much the social part of the site -- I like keeping in touch with friends and family -- but there's something about the 'interface' I find very off-putting and maybe even a little depressing or perhaps soul-crushing, not unlike the way I feel after spending more than ten minutes walking through a mall. (Which I haven't done in a long time, now that I think about it? But even typing this I feel a bit nostalgic for South Hills Village in Pittsburgh, which was pretty much 'my' mall growing up in Pittsburgh, when I felt less ambivalence about modern consumer culture.)
Here's a funny story maybe: recently someone 'friended' me on FB and then posted a really crappy review of my book, which I thought crossed the boundaries of acceptable internet etiquette, low as they are. (I 'unfriended' him, of course.) I've also had several ppl write to me to apologize for missing my reading at McNally Jackson as if it had already happened -- 'OMG I'm s000 sorry I missed ur reading -- I rlly wanted to be there!' -- which is maybe a little awkward to acknowledge. (Btw, it's next week on 1/19 at 7pm.)
And to end this rambling post on a postive note, I thought I'd again plug the Read-It-Forward site, where just by leaving a comment (presumably a good one), you can win a free copy of The Metropolis Case, and also because someone named 'Paul Forman' said one of the nicest things I've seen written about the book: 'After reading the Times review I was curious,' he wrote, 'so I borrowed the book from the public library and read the book. The last 40 so pages constitute a skillful and moving tying of the many disparate strands of the plot (all of the main characters are more than arbitrarily connected) and some of the most poetic, non-technical, writing about classical music since Thomas Mann’s tributes to Wagner.'
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