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Celebrity Publishing, and Other News

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On the Shelf

  • “I waited until my first book was published to learn the genre, and when Oprah announced ‘It’s literary fiction!’ just seconds after my pub date, I was overcome with joy.” At McSweeney’s, Jessica Francis Kane tries to make the Genre Reveal Party happen.
  • Stewart Brand, the human proto-Internet.
  • Viggo Mortensen, Johnny Depp, and 50 Cent: just three of the celebrity publishers on the scene.
  • Short fiction, annotated.
  • “Around the time we had our first home computer, my dad started to keep track of all of the books that he read in an Excel Spreadsheet. He kept his spreadsheet up to date for almost twenty years, and he’d accumulated 10,496 books before his death. My dad rated his books on a 1-10 scale, but his average score floated around 7.5/10, so I think he generally enjoyed most of what he read.” A tribute to a devoted reader.