Category: My Rise to Fame

Wow! Practical Classics has been out exactly two months. Thanks to a little bit of touring and a ton of support from you, sales are steady and continuing to climb. We've gotten some nice press in the LA Times, The Atlantic Wire, The Huffington Post and, eh, my first time on morning television. 

I've given myself until the beginning of June for this initial push which means there's still quite a bit of work left to go. Here's where else I'll be this spring.  

May 3-5: Boston (at the Muse & the Marketplace Writers Conference)

May 6: River Run Books (Portsmouth, NH. 45 minutes from Boston)

May 8:  Book Passage (Corte Madre, CA)

May 23rd:  Kepler's Books (Menlo Park, CA) 

See you on the road? In the meantime, you can get your copy of Practical Classics on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or at your favorite Independent Bookstore. 

The book is out! Purchase on Amazon or your favorite Independent Bookstore. 

And thank you!

So it was an ordinary Thursday and I was on my way to the gym when I stopped to check email. Waiting there was an email from a producer for the NPR show Talk of the Nation asking if I'd like to come on the show and talk about my book Practical Classics (coming out next month) and rereading books from high school as an adult. 

90 minutes later, I was speeding across town, a nervous wreck. 2 hours later I was set up in a dark room at KQED public radio, San Francisco, looking into a darker control room with host Neal Conan, live from Washington DC speakng into my right ear. 

I look this photo from my perch at the studio. I've no idea why its sideways. Probably because that's how I felt. 

I'm told the interview went well. Listen and judge for yourself. As important, I followed a segment on political unrest in Algeria and another about a horrifying rape case in India. If nothing else, I was the after dinner mint to a very heavy meal. 

A little about my new book, coming out in Feb. I introduce it wearing an elf hat.

If you’d like to be kept up to date on El Booko, when it’s coming out, where you can buy it, where I’ll be appearing and in what sort of costume, please leave your email address in the box below and click “subscribe”.

No spam or funny business. Scout’s honor.

After 10 months, 50 essays written and a trillion cups of coffee my book is done. I'm in production talks and last-minute this's and that's with my publisher now. Barring disaster Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books you Haven't Touched Since High School will be available at bookstores and online in February of 2013. 

I am thrilled to be done but don't quite know what to do with myself. Since last August, I've had June 1 of this year in my sights, a giant stone wall of reckoning to sprint towards but avoid hitting. I didn't exactly avoid hitting it (I turned in the manuscript on June 6) but that I finished at all, I'm calling a triumph. This was the longest thing I've ever written. And from what they tell me, 10 months is an aggressive deadline. I made, nearly almost. 

I emailed the last essay to my editor at about 7 in the evening. I had cancelled on dinner plans  (as I had 2 weddings, several birthdays and countless engagements important and small this last year) in order to finish writing. When I did I called my wife, my parents and brothers, then wasn't sure what to do next. I wasn't hungry, was far from home, and was too tired to find a rooftop to dance upon. I also havn't quite understood the enormity of it yet. If we can call it that. 

So I took myself for frozen yogurt. As the sun set and the Upper West Side of Manhatan swirled around me, I wondered if I would ever complete a creative project this large again in my life. 

And then I wanted to do it again, to try this nonsense with a whole new idea, to write smaller and bigger, in print, in print or for the radio and television and some medium that has not yet arrived. I imagined myself making this walk for frozen yogurt a dozen more times, in a dozen different places after finishing a dozen different projects. And for a moment, I had the idea that I would die well before I had said everything I needed to say. 

Practical Classics might be a complete bust. But I told myself and anyone who would listen this past year that the best I can gain from it is the idea that writing is regular to me, is something I do without torture or self-coersion, that it feels easier, that it feels more like me. 

I am closer now. I've been trying to put together an essay about finishing my book this week without much success. I wrote this post as practice. I hope gametime is easier. 

Next up is prepping for touring and promoting this thing, starting the proposal for book #3 and in general joining the world of the living again. I don't see myself being any less busy. But I do find myself filled with joy and wonder, with gratitude that I get to do this at all. And that it makes me feel like I can leap between mountain tops.