I had an awesome time at the beach today!
Filed under: Things I Want To Steal.
Sacrament is the early version of You Shall Know Our Velocity! which also has the extra chapter from Hand’s perspective. This copy is signed too. Unfortunately, this isn’t mine.
From The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011
Dave Eggers books at the West Hollywood Library.
Read this at the bookstore today. I didn’t bother correcting (e.g. The Beach Fossils = Beach Fossils) and retyped it as is.
Why do we pursue information that we know will never leave our heads?
— Dave Eggers, How We Are Hungry
Because secrets do not increase in value if kept in a gore-ian lockbox, because one’s past is either made useful or else mutates and becomes cancerous. We share things for the obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way - not simply as a pain-relief device, but, in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I’ve-seen/lessons-I’ve-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers.
— Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Is it weird to have a president who knows science fiction? I just saw a speech John Hodgman gave in front of Obama, and there were all these Dune references, and seeing that Obama knew what he was talking about was just crazy.
GPOYW Turning to my favorite book because real life is crappy at the moment and I need to distract myself.
Or, seriously, this book is freaking awesome.
(It’s “You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers.)
Since the attacks in New York, he would say, every time a crime was committed by a Muslim, that person’s faith was mentioned, regardless of its relevance. When a crime is committed by a Christian, do they mention his religion? If a Christian is stopped at the airport for trying to bring a gun on a plane, is the Western world notified that a Christian was arrested today and is being questioned? And what about African Americans? When a crime is committed by a black man, it’s mentioned in the first breath: “An African American man was arrested today…” But what about German Americans? Anglo Americans? A white man robs a convenience store and do we hear he’s of Scottish descent? In no other instance is the ancestry mentioned.
I was feeling everything too much. Everything pulled at my eyes. I spent hours floating in pools.
— Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!
Another fangirl wish fulfilled! I visited 826 Valencia in San Francisco, the home of McSweeney’s.
My very own copy of Dave Eggers’ “It Is Right To Draw Their Fur”! Thanks to Gian for buying me a gift to (indirectly) indulge my impractical dream to own everything by D.E. The illustrations are cute, but not worth the money (sadly). It contains big prints of his sketches of animals, a booklet of the same stuff, and even bigger, folded prints. I don’t know what to do with them.
