It’s always nice to get to the office *before* sunrise and leave *after* sunset.

Ha.

http://airamerica.com/entertainment/10-30-2009/watch-jon-stewart-eviscerates-fox-news/

I was driving to work and listening to World Have Your Say on the BBC, and it suddenly occured to me: My book is primarily centered around the fall of the Berlin Wall.  And today is the 20th anniversary of that fall. And my book just came out in German, in March. And I haven’t said anything about it on my website. Nothing!

And so I wonder: Why are authors such terrible promoters, by and large?

Bad, bad Pauls.

Thanks to Amy Lemmon (whose book of poems, Saint Nobody, is wonderful, and just came out this year from Red Hen Press) for reminding me, as well. Why not post my cover? Why not link to the amazon.de page for the book — which has a nifty trailer? Why not, indeed?

Coming soon: A short bit about a book by the journalist Tom Krattenmaker…

You can read it, here!

I didn’t know what was in it! Then I read it. Here’s the link. Scroll down a bit to reach the .pdf. It’s only 42 pages to understand it! I printed it out and read it over lunch. It was actually kind of exciting.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/05/health.care/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/europe/04levistrauss.html

Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist whose revolutionary studies of what was once called “primitive man” transformed Western understanding of the nature of culture, custom and civilization, has died at 100.

His son Laurent said Mr. Lévi-Strauss died of cardiac arrest Friday at his home in Paris. His death was announced Tuesday, the same day he was buried in the village of Lignerolles, in the Côte-d’Or region southeast of Paris, where he had a country home…

There are three books I want to read — badly enough that it’s making me worry about the fact that I don’t have any time to read them! But this is not a bad thing, in some ways. It just clarifies my reading list for the Winter Holidays.

Here they are. Perhaps talking about them will ease my distress over not reading them:

Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer

Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon

The Museum of Innocence, by Orhan Pamuk

The first two titles have particular resonance for me, personally. And the last: Well, I heard an interview with Pamuk saying that he was actually building the museum from his novel, this year, in Istanbul. If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.

I am reading a little bit right now: The Night Counter, by Alia Yunis.

This is a great novel!

More soon…

Bless you, Anderson Cooper:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/15/tea-party-leader-melts-do_n_286933.html

John Stewart is back on the air:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/15/jon-stewart-returns-slams_n_286906.html

No wonder things went nutty for a while.

The uptick in vitriol from his opponents has me deeply worried… How can we get distracted from the health care debate at a time like this? Please — do what you can to bring calm to this debate…

Grading papers!
Ha!