A bookstore in the UK linked GIRL with one of my favorite books of the last year:  THE SISTERS BROTHERS by Patrick deWitt !!    My friend Sally who first turned me onto SISTERS, is now listening to it on Audio and likes it so much, I might have to do the same.

Just watched SOMEWHERE by Sofia Coppola and recently also read Sheila Heti's (pictured) book HOW SHOULD A PERSON BE?   The two seemed similar in some way.   I guess in the honesty of their female perspective.   Loved them both, though it's painful as a guy to experience how girls think of us.   Sofia Coppola can be especially brutal.  In VIRGIN SUICIDES there's this scene where the dad opens a beer and watches a football game that I swear, is the most painful thing I've ever watched on film.   The emptiness Coppola sees there, it's horrifying.  

SISTER SPIT ANTHOLOGY

The new Sister Spit Anthology is out!   Published by Sister Spits own new imprint at City Lights.  What fun to see that legendary CITY LIGHTS logo on something that I'm actually in!   I loved getting like HOWL and some of Kerouac's books when I was just a kid and hanging around San Francisco.   And stuff like Sam Shepard's MOTEL CHRONICLES, a favorite of mine.

So we read at Skylight Books in Los Feliz which was full and lively as always happens with Sister Spit things.   So fun.  I read from my "tour diary" and everyone seemed amused by my descriptions of college kids in the new Foodie era.   Also present:  the ever wonderful Michelle Tea,  Harry Dodge (pictured), Myriam Gurba, Tara Jepsen, Cassie J. Sneider (pictured left top), Sara Seinberg (pictured left bottom), Tamara Llosa-Sandor.

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Found myself googling PARANOID PARK over the holiday.   I don't think about that book much.  I guess because it did well, and the great movie was made from it, it doesn't need my attention anymore.   If all your books are your children, Paranoid Park is my child that went to Harvard and now has a great job.    

Some of my other books are going to community college and are still living in my basement and those are the ones that need my help! 

Jack Gantos: fashion mentor

Just got done with the Los Angeles Times Book Festival, which for me is basically a 48 hour social anxiety attack, un-medicated (thank you, thank you) but I got through it and anyway, probably everyone else is as freaked out as I am, writers are like that.

Saw fellow Portlander Cheryl Strayed who is having a huge success with her new memoir WILD and she has been on the road for like a month, so imagine what it must be like for her. (Probably better, actually, as you must inevitably get used to these things).

Also got to meet Jack Gantos (above), who is one of my fave kids writers and also, more importantly, my fashion mentor.   I told him, "I didn't know how to dress as a middle aged, male, YA writer, then I saw a picture of you and I was like, oh, okay, I should just do that."

But I was actually at that moment wearing a boring preppie J Crew shirt, but he said, "Well, you've got a nice New England thing going ..."