Monday, November 29, 2010

Paul Auster | Sunset Park | Audiobook Giveaway

So I've had this audiobook version of Paul Auster's Sunset Park sitting here just waiting to be given away, but I wanted to make sure I at least liked the book a little. And, a couple of hundred pages into it, I do. So, if you are interested, leave a comment below. I'll pick the winner out of a hat (the name, not the actual person) and contact them about mailing information. This is limited to folks living in the US or Canada. Sorry about that, rest of the world (well, that and all the pollution and stuff). I'll take entrants until Friday, December 3rd at 11:59 pm EST.

Hope everyone out there had a Happy Thanksgiving and is settling in for a pleasant winter of reading.

                                     Cheers, the Ape

UPDATE: Well, the gods of randomness have spoken and congratulations Savannah! Thanks all for entering.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Literary Fact of the Day Round Up: Oct 28-November 12, 2010

In case you don't use Twitter or for some inexcusable reason have missed a LFOTD from the last couple of weeks, here's a recap:


  • At age 26, Edgar Allan Poe married his 13 year old cousin, Virginia Clemm. 
  • Robert Lowell was a conscientous objector during World War II and spend several months in Danbury's minimum security prison.
  • Edna St Vincent Millay got her middle name from the NYC hospital where her uncle's life was saved just before her birth.
  • The creator of Lifesavers candy was the father of the poet Hart Crane, who drowned in the Gulf of Mexico. (Can't make this stuff up)
  • Wallace Stevens' father disapproved of his son's marriage, and after the engagement announcement they never spoke to each other again
  •  In 1912, William Carlos Williams married Florence Herman, but only after her older sister rejected his proposal.
  • Joyce Carol Oates was Foer's advisor @ Princeton & oversaw his senior thesis, which would eventually become EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED.
  • Annie Proulx and her four sisters had not been all in the same room for more than 40 years until their father's funeral.
  • During the Nazi occupation of Italy, Italo Calvino went into hiding to avoid conscription & the Nazis put his parents in detention.
  • Ralph Ellison wrote over 2000 pages for his second novel, worked on it for more than 30 years, and never finished it.
  • If Dostoyevsky had not submitted CRIME & PUNISHMENT to his publisher on-time, he would have lost his rights to all past & future work.
  • In 1824, Lafayette returned to an adoring US. During his parade in NY, he embraced a boy in the crowd. It was 5 year old Walt Whitman.
  • Princeton has conferred multiple honorary degrees on only one person: Booth Tarkington.
  • Only three writers have multiple Pulitzer Prizes for fiction: Updike, Faulker, and Booth Tarkington.
  • Acutely aware of his condition & ever the wit, Oscar Wilde's last words were "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do." Wallpaper stayed.