Pre-Holiday Round Up

NY Mag, Very Good Hats, Endless Illnesses

Hello, dear readers! Apologies for the sluggishness of this newsletter lately—my children have been sick, truly, since Thanksgiving, and also before Thanksgiving, and now I am sick too. For this reason, I am totally behind on everything—my screenplay, my holiday shopping, literally everything other than blowing my nose and petting my cats. With that in mind, here is a random assortment of good things in the world.

If you’re in NYC, get yourself to the Guggenheim for the Alex Katz and Nick Cave exhibits! Both are so so so so worth it, which I (ahem) don’t always feel about the Gugg! The Gugg is expensive! But this time, truly worth $25.

Me n Meg Wolitzer at the Center for Fiction party. Meg is the only author for whom I have an author shelf talker instead of a book shelftalker—meaning, I have a little note on her shelf that says how much I love her, and how great ALL her books are, not just a single one! How could I choose just ONE?? Impossible. In this photo, we are modeling our small bags, both of which look like books.

This Time Tomorrow won an Audiophile Earphones Award! Of course it did, it’s Marin fucking Ireland! I take no credit but appreciate it all the same. You know what’s a good present, actually? Credits at Libro.fm! I know you’re not still using Audible. You couldn’t be! You must already be using Libro, the indie friendly audiobook company. They are the best. Right at this moment I am using Libro to listen to Lauren Graham’s forthcoming book, Have I Told You This Already?, which is so fun, and exactly what my snot-soaked brain needs. I love Lauren Graham. She is so smart and funny and she makes a joke about Jen E. Smith and Jenny Han and I laughed out loud.

I was on the cover of New York Magazine! That sounds like a fever dream (sick joke!) but it’s not.

Do you want to check to see if my eyes are closed? They are.

The most alarming thing that it suddenly being mid-December is that my picture book, Very Good Hats, is out in (gulp) less than a month. That means another book tour, which means more book tour content, so look forward to that. I have to make a slideshow presentation, which my friend Adam Rubin talked me through, and he invented both dragons AND tacos so he knows what he’s talking about, but also I have to convince people to buy it! So let’s move into that portion of the newsletter.

The book is an Indie Next Pick! And it’s had TWO starred reviews so far! And it has prompted many conversations about raspberry hats and cloud hats and soup bowl hats and cats in hats and I very much think that you should preorder a half dozen copies. Ok, one! One copy. For each child in your life.

But that’s not all! If you’re here in Brooklyn, come hang with me on Montague Street for my hometown story time!

There are probably more things that I wanted to tell you but my brain is wearing a snot hat right now and so I don’t remember what they are. Unsolved mysteries! Be well, everyone, and if you are in the spin cycle of childhood illnesses with me, I send love, solidarity, and a hearty recommendation for Vicks Sinex Decongestant, which has to be using some very powerful shit, because it says not to use it for more than three days. My neti pot wishes it were half as powerful.