Bill Cheng's Blog, page 118

90outloud:Letting Go by Philip Roth, read by Steven...

90outloud:

Letting Go by Philip Roth, read by Steven Volynets.

Roth’s Letting Go an be found at http://www.randomhouse.com/book/158021/letting-go-by-philip-roth. 

Keep up with Steven on twitter: @StevenVolynets

Or follow him online at stevenvolynets.com

nathanenglander:Philip Roth’s 80th Birthday Cake from...

nathanenglander:

Philip Roth’s 80th Birthday Cake from yesterday’s celebration in Newark.

"Today the US Supreme Court announced its much-anticipated decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, a lawsuit..."

“Today the US Supreme Court announced its much-anticipated decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, a lawsuit regarding the bedrock principle of the “first sale doctrine.” The 6-3 opinion is a total victory for libraries and our users. It vindicates the foundational principle of the first sale doctrine—if you bought it, you own it. All who believe in that principle, and the certainty it provides to libraries and many other parts of our culture and economy, should join us in applauding the Court for correcting the legal ambiguity that led to this case in the first place. It is especially gratifying that Justice Breyer’s majority opinion focused on the considerable harm that the Second Circuit’s opinion would have caused libraries.”

-

Association of Research Libraries (ARL®) :: Library Copyright Alliance Statement on Supreme Court Decision in Kirtsaeng v… (via arlpolicynotes)

Yes! A win for libraries!

(via akatreadsinbrookline)

"It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right..."

““It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don’t have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.””

- Philip Pullman (via )

10 Free Stories from George Saunders

10 Free Stories from George Saunders:

Thanks for keeping fiction fresh!

A reading in Philadelphia

FYI, if you’re in Philly tomorrow:

lizmooremusic:

Despite the number of readings I’ve done, I’ve done very few in Center City, Philadelphia. (One, I think??) Tomorrow night, I am honored to be included in a sweet three-person line-up as part of the longstanding TireFire reading series.

The details:

Marie-Helene Bertino, Marcus Pactor, Liz Moore (<—when I am part of line-ups like these I wish for a more interesting name)

Tattooed Mom (<— a bar)

530 South Street, Philadelphia PA

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Doors at 7, Reading promptly at 8

Event website

I hope to see you / meet you / high-five you there!

Why I Am a Thief

newyorker:

Editors’ note: In 1902, Mary MacLane, a nineteen-year-old-girl from Butte, Montana, published a book detailing her fantasies, her outrageous philosophical ideas, and intimations of her own genius. The book was a sensation, selling a hundred thousand copies in its first month, and launching her into a short but fiery life of writing and misadventure. A template for the confessional memoirs that have become ubiquitous, “I Await the Devil’s Coming,” is being published in a new edition by Melville House this week.

Here’s an excerpt: http://nyr.kr/Ykht64

 

Photograph: Library of Congress.

“When the world knows you are a thief it blinds itself completely to your other attributes. It calls you a thief, and there’s an end. I am a genius as well as a thief—but the world would quite overlook that fact. “A thief’s a thief,” says the world. That is very true. But the mere fact of being a thief should not exclude the consideration of one’s other traits… And so if it condemns you for being a thief, it should at the same time admire you for being a genius. If it does not admire you for being a genius, then it has no right to condemn you for being a thief.”

ooh…

"Next Week on The Bachelor"

"Next Week on The Bachelor":

NEW STORY BY MIRACLE JONES!

mraclejones:

“Every time a rooster in the pit screeched as a razor split its face or tore a tendon in its leg, Chris Harrison, host of television’s “The Bachelor” and also “The Bachelorette,” felt a wave of relaxation pass through his shoulders, sloughing off another layer of crystallized tension.”

Dear New York Irish and Lovers of Language All,Colum McCann is...

Dear New York Irish and Lovers of Language All,

Colum McCann is back hosting the annual St. Patrick’s day readings of great Irish literature— this year at Swift’s Hibernian Lounge.

So bring your Joyce, your O’Briens, your Becketts, and McCourts and ease back with a golden bride of Harp.

To the Fiction-Bandit who absconded with my story at the end of...

To the Fiction-Bandit who absconded with my story at the end of last night’s Derangement of the Senses:

Well played.