{"id":5720,"date":"2010-11-05T04:00:04","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T08:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=5720"},"modified":"2010-11-04T18:22:50","modified_gmt":"2010-11-04T22:22:50","slug":"unrequired-reading-nov-5-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-nov-5-2010","title":{"rendered":"Unrequired Reading: Nov. 5, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s kick off with a whole bunch of articles and posts about books and bookstores! (then back to the other craziness for which I’m renowned)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Do today’s book editors suck?<\/a> Pretty much, yeah.<\/li>\n
  2. Is “the book” in crisis?<\/a> I just re-re-re-read a 3,000-year-old poem of 15,000+ lines, so I’m not the best person to consult on this.<\/li>\n
  3. Is “the bookstore” in crisis? Not Politics & Prose, apparently<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  4. Nor Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, the bookstore that thinks it’s a hotel<\/a>. (I’m very happy that I’ve been there, although I haven’t stayed overnight.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    Okay, now back to the wilder range of posts that you’ve come to expect from this weekly mishmash:<\/p>\n

    . . . like candy-flavored, caffeinated malt liquor<\/a>!<\/p>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    Or a slo-mo video of a Shaolin monk throwing a sewing needle through a sheet of glass to pop a balloon<\/a>?<\/p>\n

    * * *
    \n    Unpalletable<\/a> (ha-ha) news about the pharma industry.<\/p>\n

    * * *
    \nI’m sure there’s a     Diet of Worms joke in here<\/a>, but I’m too lazy to make it.<\/p>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    And all this time I thought Kenny Powers was the mullet monstrosity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    I’ll keep this gator-wrestling advice<\/a> for my next trip down to Louisiana.<\/p>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    I can only hope my wife’s food photography does not veer into this territory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    Henry Rollins goes bananas on hipsters<\/a>. The moment he flips out is a-w-e-s-o-m-e.<\/p>\n

    <\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Let’s kick off with a whole bunch of articles and posts about books and bookstores! (then back to the other craziness for which I’m renowned)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,27,40,12],"tags":[1189],"class_list":["post-5720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-big-business","category-music","category-pharmaceuticals","tag-henry-rollins"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1ug","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2591,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-price-of-popcorn-pimp-hats","url_meta":{"origin":5720,"position":0},"title":"The Price of popcorn pimp hats","author":"Gil","date":"October 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In my previous post, I mentioned how little of a crap I give for contemporary literature. There are very few works of fiction published this decade that particularly impressed me. Two of those books were Lush Life and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In what seems to be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00139XS1U","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1597,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/good-night-sweet-baba","url_meta":{"origin":5720,"position":1},"title":"Good Night, Sweet Baba","author":"Gil","date":"July 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, died yesterday: The deposed king took up residence in a villa on Via Cassia, a main thoroughfare leading north out of Rome. He played chess and took walks. He was sometimes seen sitting in a caf\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00a9 sipping a cappuccino or browsing through\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10001,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-194-bob-eckstein","url_meta":{"origin":5720,"position":2},"title":"Episode 194 – Bob Eckstein","author":"Gil","date":"November 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show #194: Bob Eckstein \"This book has three things I love: bookstores, painting and name-dropping.\" Artist, writer, humorist and cartoonist Bob Eckstein joins the show to talk about his wonderful new book, Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis"},"img":{"alt_text":"9780553459272","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/9780553459272-440x360.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/9780553459272-440x360.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/9780553459272-440x360.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1823,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bookseller-bookmaker-whatever","url_meta":{"origin":5720,"position":3},"title":"Bookseller, bookmaker: whatever!","author":"Gil","date":"December 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The most amazing thing to me about this news item isn't that Michael Jackson's face is covered with bandages, nor even that he has custody of three children. No, what amazes me is that there's a Barnes & Noble in Las Vegas. Seriously, I've been to Vegas 4-5 times now,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6960,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-the-importance-of-being-out","url_meta":{"origin":5720,"position":4},"title":"Podcast: The Importance of Being Out","author":"Gil","date":"March 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories - season 3 episode 7 - The Importance of Being Out It's time for the first double-episode of the season! \"To me, there are two types of YA: one is fiction written with the kid in mind, and the other is where the characters happen to be that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=B002SQJL9U","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1810,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-dec-7-2007","url_meta":{"origin":5720,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Dec. 7, 2007","author":"Gil","date":"December 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Another Friday, another collection of quirky links, dear readers! As far as I know, my wife did not bring these with her from Louisiana. * * * I guess this would constitute the meta-version of college kids wasting their time with Tetris. * * * The world's most gorgeous bookstore.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5720"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5724,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5720\/revisions\/5724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}