The Olive Reader

the given day . . . and night!

2009-11-10T15:34:00-05:00

Dennis Lehane on Craig Ferguson=hilarious. Worth ten minutes listening while you work.

naked girls reading

2009-11-10T02:14:01-05:00

Warning: The website I am about to discuss has some naked breasts on it. Don’t freak out. Naked Girls Reading stages events in major cities across the US with (shockingly enough) naked women reading books. They’ve already done several, including one in honor of banned books week, and will soon be doing a nude reading of A Christmas Carol in honor of the holiday. They read sexy books (Lady Chatterley’s Lover) and non-sexy books (Oh the Places You’ll Go!) As their about page says: Naked Girls Reading is a group of beautiful ladies who love to read…naked. That’s really it. There’s not a whole lot more to it. Should there be? I mean, sure, we also like to do it in front all of you voyeurs via photos, videos and very special live events, but you don’t have to look for something larger here – something pretentious or even seedy. Once you experience it, you’ll stop asking so many questions and just let the concept take you. There’s something beautiful, something altogether more intimate, about a woman reading pretty much anything in her, well, altogether. It’s just that simple. So why are we still talking about it? Because people can’t seem to accept its simplicity. I’m posting about this tonight not necessarily because I think it’s something some of our readers will enjoy (though some of you undoubtedly will) or because I want to get some angry comments (like when I posted about fuck yeah puppies), but because I can’t make up my mind about it. It all seems very rah-rah reading, until you get to the part about how Naked Girls Reading is related to the Naked Girls Book Club, a members-only site with videos of some of the Naked Girls and other salacious content that charges (a small) fee. What do you all think? Let’s discuss!

more bookmaking!

2009-11-05T15:20:00-05:00

To continue from our lovely homemade book post from yesterday, here’s a video of an equally awesome book creation:

harper perennial how-to: bookmaking 101

2009-11-03T17:34:00-05:00

One of our editors recently sent me some photos of a book she had made. Yes, made. Not in a class, just in her house, on a random bored weekend afternoon. So I asked her to explain to you, olive reader readers, how she did it. I’ve been told by my mother that I was born with scissors and a gluestick (some might say “cray-zay” glue) in my hands, and I recently put this old bit of family lore to the test. Surrounded as I am at my job by impressive feats of paper engineering – - the lovely books on our shelves – - I figured, why not make one myself? In my quest to build a book from scratch, I thankfully stumbled across Alisa Golden’s Expressive Handmade Books – - a fantastic guide for the journey. After printing my text on paper torn against a ruler (to give it the rough edge), I folded my pages in groups of eight and stitched the batches together. To make the hardcover case, I speedily applied glue to three pieces of board and wrapped them in a scrap of fabric – - thereby turning glue, my former birthright, into my sort-of, like, frenemy. I then attached the case to the text block using the maroon-colored endpapers. It’s the perfect one-day project – - unless you’re me, and you spend most of the afternoon wrestling with your printer output settings. Then it’s a two-day project that involves frustrated fist-shaking and replenishment of calories lost during frustrated fist-shaking via baking detour into Ree Drummond’s new cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks. I mean, you can’t really have the word “bookmaking” without the B, A, K, I, N, or G, can you? And at a whopping 2.75” wide and 5.5” tall, it makes the pocket-perfect Olive Editions look boldly XXL.

because everything is better in a unitard

2009-11-02T16:33:00-05:00

… and because in my head this is now the Headless Horseman’s side job. if only he had a pumpkin-headed cat sidekick dancing with him…

since the nyc marathon is on sunday . . .

2009-10-30T18:49:00-05:00

We here at Harper Perennial have a friend: Baker. Baker began as a friend of our art director Robin, and now he’s practically part of the team. He even comes to events! But while Baker loves us and our books, what he loves more is running. As he says when asked why he runs, and why he started his site, Beyond Defeat: “I was inspired watching the 2007 NYC Marathon from a non-runner perspective. It was at that moment I decided to set out to conquer a marathon. After competing in the 2008 NYC Marathon I became hooked on running. I started running every race I could enter, getting better at each time. With each race I had funny stories, wether they were related to my activities the night prior, or directly after the race. Friends started becoming interested, so I thought to start putting them online for all to read. Now they serve a few different functions. Although many can be humorous, I like to try and use these running stories to inspire others.” So, in honor of this weekend’s marathon, we’re paying tribute to our own favorite runner. Baker, we love you!

Shelf Discovery: our list!

2009-10-29T19:24:00-05:00

Argh, don’t you hate when you accidentally post something before it’s ready? That last post should have had our Shelf Discovery Challenge book list, so here it is. All of these books are super tentative and subject to change based on our whims/us thrusting our copies of certain books in each other’s hands and begging each other to read them. Participating will be me (Erica Barmash), AB (our Harper Perennial marketing director Amy Baker), and our Harper Paperbacks marketing team: CS (Cathy Serpico, who blogs here as well) and SS (Stephanie Selah, appearing on the olive reader for the first time!) We’re each doing one book we’ve read before and one book someone else recommended. And our beloved Book Club Girl will be doing her own challenge on Bookclubgirl.com. So, the books (in random order) with our comments: Stephanie Are You There God – “I read it when I was too young to understand some of the nuances of what was actually going on.” My Darling, My Hamburger – I suggested this to Stephanie as her “book I’ve never read before.” Cathy Wolves of Willoughby Chase – “It’s like an Edward Gorey world, but for kids.” Erica and Cathy Flowers in the Attic Erica: “Who doesn’t love incest and kids being hidden in attics?” Cathy: “I remember my brother’s girlfriend telling me about that book and I said “Is that like Flowers for Algernon?” Erica Ring of Endless Light: Book Club Girl was simply appalled that I had not read this one. Amy Stranger with My Face: “Do you know how many times I tried to astral project after reading this?!” Then Again, Maybe I Won’t: “Why don’t people talk about wet dreams anymore? That’s all we used to talk about when I was 11. Do guys still have those?” AND, I still plan to host a Christopher Pike mini-challenge, and will be forcing Christopher Pike books on these ladies who have shockingly never read them since I own all of them.

We’re joining the Shelf Discovery challenge!

2009-10-29T17:46:00-05:00

For the first time ever, we here at the Olive Reader will be participating in a blog challenge—Booking Mama’s Shelf Discovery Challenge! And we’re not just doing it because Shelf Discovery is one of our books, we’re doing it because Shelf Discovery is awesome, as is the classic YA lit it features.

more spelling!

2009-10-29T13:37:00-05:00

Here’s some video from Monday’s CLMP spelling bee, courtesy of Vanity Fair. Sadly, our Ben Greenman (you know, THE WINNER) isn’t featured, but you can see him stand up to take his turn after James Frey gets out, and you can get a good look at the judge, Oxford English Dictionary editor-at-large Jesse Sheidlower, who basically made the night. I also enjoyed this anecdote from the Wall Street Journal site about Ben: “After the event, Greenman was standing outside when a passing beggar asked for change. Greenman obliged, walked away, then stopped and contemplated giving the man his crown, too. Then he thought better of it, since the crown was only tin-foil, not silver. Also, Greenman said, ‘How do I know that he’s a good speller?’”

Harper Perennial Pets Presents . . . Gummo and Zeppo!

2009-10-28T20:35:01-05:00

Not many people know this, but cats are integral to the editing process at Harper Perennial. For example, here we have Gummo and Zeppo, the felines belonging to editor Peggy Hageman, hard at work: No word on what book they were working on. Perhaps The Enthusiast, one of my personal favorite PH-guided titles?