The Millions

At FiveChapters this week, you can read an excerpt of Sam Lipsyte’s forthcoming novel, The Ask.

Who says publishers have weak brands?  Someone loves the NYRB Classics so much they started a Tumblr blog about them.  It is called, appropriately, Fuck Yeah NYRB Classics!

In an interview about her new book, The Day I Shot Cupid: Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt and I’m a Love-aholic, Jennifer Love had some rather startling advice for jilted young ladies: “After a breakup, a friend of mine Swarovski-crystalled my precious lady. It shined like a disco ball so I have a whole chapter in there on how women should vagazzle their vajayjays.”

LIFE Magazine has put together a slideshow collecting portraits of some of history’s most notorious literary dabblers in all varieties of substances from Charles Baudelaire to John Berryman. (via bb)

Do you have an ereader but miss the look and feel of a gorgeous hardcover book?  Do you want people to think you’re all about print when in fact you are riding the digital wave?  Then you simply must get this incredible Book sleeve for your iPad, Macbook or Kindle.  (Via Peter Knox’s tumblr blog)

Novelist Joanna Smith Rakoff once handled J.D. Salinger’s fan mail.  (via.)

Here are the first lines of the new David Mitchell novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, forthcoming in July: “‘Miss Kawasemi?’ Orito kneels on a stale and sticky futon. ‘Can you hear me?’ In the rice paddy beyond the garden, a cacophony of frogs detonates. Orito dabs the concubine’s sweat-drenched face with a damp cloth.”

For those who like their celebrity fashion with a voluptuous lashing of satire, this Fug’s for you.  Check out the maybe-not-so-pretty fashion blog Go Fug Yourself’s Grammy Awards coverage–or lack of coverage, as was (quelle suprise!) the case with Britney Spears.

The Vault chooses the “20 Worst Hip-Hop Album Covers”. Sorry, South Coast Shorty.

If you’re not watching Masterpiece Theatre’s toothsome Emma on Sundays, Jane Austen enthusiasts, you should be. No zombies. We promise.

Over at the handsomely redesigned Open Letters Monthly, yours truly weighs in on William T. Vollmann.

Don DeLillo’s slim new volume Point Omega is out. The Wall Street Journal recently published a piece on DeLillo that explains how the movie Psycho helped inspire the book. Also new this week is Louise Erdrich’s new novel Shadow Tag