Entries Tagged 'couch' ↓

Yes, the rumors are true: I’ll be in your town searching for the perfect cinnamon roll.

<—- IS THIS IT?!

If I find the time, I may also read at a book store. The cinnamon roll quest is scheduled around the following divine cinnamony space-time manifestations:

Portland, OR – Powell’s Books, March 16th, starting at 5:00pm. I’m part of Powell’s Smallpressalooza put on by Kevin Sampsell of Future Tense, so there will be a lot of readings this night. Here’s the full list and it looks great:

5:00 Starlite Motel (“Night Bomb”)
5:15 Zachary Schomburg (“The Pond”)
5:30 Tim Sproul (“How to Leave Your Hometown for Good”)
6:00 Ronault L.S. Catalani AKA Polo (“Counter Culture”)
6:15 Emiko Badillo (“Broken Hipster” zine)
6:30 Matt Briggs (“The End Is the Beginning”)
7:00 Moe Bowstern (“Xtra Tuf” zine)
7:15 Karen Giezyng (“Bumpstart” zine)
7:30 Lia Cunningham (“The People I Love Best” zine)
8:00 Molly McNett (“One Dog Happy”)
8:15 Benjamin Parzybok (“Couch”)
8:30 Evan Schneider (“Boneshaker” zine)
9:00 Samuel Ligon (“Drift and Swerve”)
9:15 Jeff Stewart (“March of Time & Skin”)
9:30 Riley Michael Parker (“Our Beloved 26th”)
9:46 – 12:01 – Dionysian cinnamon roll engorgement!

Should be a great night. I have no idea what I’ll read, but there certainly seems to be quite a few books in the store to choose from.

The rest of the schedule may be seen in detail here: http://booktour.com/author/benjamin_parzybok

March 17th – Olympia, WA – Orca Books!

March 18th – Tacoma, WA – Garfield Book Company at PLU

March 19th – Seattle, WA – Seattle Public Library – Ballard Branch (via Secret Garden Books)

March 21th – Bellingham, WA – Village Books

March 23rd – Missoula, MT -Fact & Fiction

March 24th – Dillon, MT – The Bookstore

March 25th – Spokane, WA – Auntie’s Books – oh look, an Ugly Couch Contest at Auntie’s! – click to see fullsize:

Please help me find the perfect cinnamon roll.

Yours,
Ben

How exciting is that? Well, I’ll tell you – I’ve been dancing drunk on top of my desk since Friday afternoon when I first saw it, and now I’m not sure how to get off, and I think I’ve done some irreparable damage to my keyboard and stubbed a toe, and no one will hand me any more liquor, but other than that it’s pretty damn cool. Now -hand me that bottle please?

The reviewer, Ed Park (author of Personal Days) talks about Charles Portis and quotes side-by-side from one of his books and Couch, which is fun to see. I was given True Grit by my friend Mel Favara (of 1000 reading series) last year and loved it – I’ll have to pick up the others.

At any rate, here’s the review of Couch in the LA Times.

Thanks, Ed!

(incidentally – here’s Ed Park at length on Charles Portis: Like Cormac McCarthy, But Funny)

Want to know how many of y’all’s blogs I subscribe to? That answer and more is covered in my interview with Charles Tan of Bibliophile Stalker.

Thanks Charles!

Also: this morning the pseudo-fog was lovely over the school and afforded a photo of a white sun, which Sylvie called the moon.

Click for large version.

Also, Powell’s mentioned that they have a few signed copies of a book called Couch if that’s the kind of weird fiction you’re into. I wouldn’t know. Watch out for the fingers!

Here are a bunch of updates on the book.

1) Tour! I’m doing another wee tour in the Pacfic Northwest: Portland-Olympia-Tacoma-Seattle-Bellingham-Spokane-Missoula-Dillon. I’ll post more on those dates/places soon or you can check on the booktour site. Dillon, MT! I’m excited about this tour because it retraces some personal history: 

• Village Books in Bellingham – I was a soup maker in the connected Colophon Cafe
• Orca Books in Olympia – I went to school at Evergreen and spent a lot of time haunting Orca
• Auntie’s Books in Spokane, where I grew up. (I had a bed near the magazine rack)

2) Reviews. Here are a number of places that were kind enough to mention Couch. Thanks, all.

L-Magazine – very kind review by Nina MacLaughlin

Antsthereader’s blog casts Tree as Rhys Ifans  

Maureen McHugh talks about young people books

The Daily Evergreen reviews Couch – twice!

Once by Jessica Schubert McCarthy and again by Andrew McCarthy.

3) Interview: Geoffrey Goodwin interviewed me for Bookslut

Regarding the Bookslut interview – there was a bit of a mixup, and the rough draft where I said a few idiotic things, such as:  ”Murakami allowed me to bridge the world…” — imagine for yourself a giant human bridge between Portland and Japan with my face on it — got posted first. However Geoffrey Goodwin and Jessa Crispin were kind enough to re-post the final version.

4) Signed books – if your and my trajectories through time and space intersect at any of my tour stops above, the possibility of a signed book is high. Alternately:  I signed about sixty books at Powells recently — I’m not exactly sure how one might obtain one of these, though it’s quite possible they’ll post the signed versions to their site. I’ll mention it if these surface. Incidentally, the people at Powell’s have taken to pronouncing Couch as cooch, after the street the Couch carries pass. Powell’s is also on Couch st. (Google streetview)

5) Back to press. I heard news from the towering offices of Small Beer Press that Couch will be heading back to print soon — I’m amazed the first million have already sold! Incredible. Thanks for buying all those copies, Mom!

6) Coffee. I apologize to my writing group members for spilling the entire contents of a Vietnamese iced coffee across all of the manuscripts I was supposed to be critiquing. They are now sticky and brown, as is my phone/lap/etc.

7) Poster. If you asked me for a signed poster, those are now in the mail. I still have a few left, so if you’d like one let me know.

(Note: Updated for correct spelling of Neil Gaiman and the correct award, whoops!)

This is very fun — I’m taking a snapshot here in case this disappears in a bit — but I was just informed that Couch is currently third on Powell’s bestseller list (updated hourly) — behind Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but ahead of – good lord, and it just won a Caldecott Newberry – Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.

This is likely a result of being a part of Powell’s incredibly awesome Indiespensable program along with Tinkers author Paul Harding.

Go Couch!