Saturday, March 31, 2007

Christopher Moore

So last night Klund, Scooter, Poo-Tee-Wheet and I had a fine dinner at Jewel of India, and then drove across the river to the U of M's student union and a "reading" and book signing by Christopher Moore, who is touring to promote his latest book, You Suck. "Reading" is in quotes because Moore doesn't do readings; instead he rambles for about an hour from notecards (post-its, actually), newspaper articles, and anything else he can think of. The podcast isn't up yet on the U's website, but I'll try to remember to post a link when it is. Basically there was a lot of foul language (including proper spelling thereof), some discussion of chest-shaving as it relates to book tours, many put-downs of Hollywood types, the usual sorts of unexpected (not to say "shallow") questions ("What's your favorite simile you've written?"), and a goodly number of laughs.

I didn't buy a book for Mr. Moore to sign, mostly because Lamb is not currently available in hardback. However, Moore revealed that there will be a new hardbound "gift" edition of Lamb out sometime this year, and I will definitely pick that up and catch him on his next tour.

Interestingly, in a brief conversation I had with Moore while he was signing Kevin's copy of Lamb, I learned that he was working at the little restaurant in Harmony, California when he wrote his first book, Practical Demonkeeping. Since it was copyrighted in 1995, there's a good chance Moore was working there when Kristi and I got married in the Harmony wedding chapel in 1994. I will from now on be claiming that Moore was at our wedding. Try to prove me wrong.

UPDATE: it has come to my attention that Practical Demonkeeping was copyright 1992, meaning that Chris Moore was well on his way to publishing superstardom by the time Kristi and I got married in Harmony. Rather than indicating that Moore wasn't at our wedding, I prefer to think of this as meaning he was there, but incognito, as befits a rising star of his magnitude.

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Thursday, January 18, 2007

Hold!

I've been watching the Saint Paul library's online catalog daily to see when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows showed up, so that I could place a hold on it ASAP. It showed up last week, but the website reported that "There is no publication date for this work in progress," and refused to let me place a hold. Fine. So I kept checking daily. And Friday, it still said "There is no publication date for this work in progress," but there were also five holds, and I still couldn't place one.

Kristi's theory was that it was library staff getting a jump on the public. I didn't like the theory much, but what the heck. I continued watching, and today it got up to 15 holds, and I got annoyed. So I called. Turns out there's something wrong with their online catalog, and those holds were all placed either in the library or on the phone. So I'm number 16 in the system. Since they're guaranteed to get more than 16 copies, I should get it fairly quickly. And then I'll read it to Emma.

I love libraries. I really do.

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