Sloane Crosley is the editor of this year’s edition of The Best American Travel Writing, which is out today, and features essays by William T. Vollman, Gary Shteyngart, and other notable authors. If you’re not familiar with Crosley’s writing, you should check out I Was Told There Would Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number — two books of personal essays that will make even the most hardened cynic chuckle.
To honor her new editing gig, Crosley wrote some key travel tips for those who are vain, budget-conscious, and notoriously lazy. So get ready to take a short tour of the area outside your neighborhood; you will need some walking shoes and the illusion that you are elsewhere.
Vacations are sacred, especially in America, where we work longer hours than our counterparts in Europe and still aren’t legally entitled to a single paid day off. But what we often forget — that is, until we’re getting stung by a jellyfish or stranded at an airport — is that they’re also rarely the ideal escapes we build them up to be. In an essay about Disney World for last weekend’s New York Times magazine, John Jeremiah Sullivan reminds us. Since others’ holidays of misery make us feel better about our own failure to plan a summer vacation, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite tales of awful travel experiences, by authors including David Sedaris, Sloane Crosley, David Foster Wallace, and more.
Although it doesn’t come out in print until Sunday, The New York Times has posted its yearly “100 Notable Books” list online. And while it’s got most of the big names — Ian McEwan, Nicole Krauss, Zadie Smith, and, of course, the literary novel’s pop-culture poster boy, Jonathan Franzen — we couldn’t help but notice how many of our favorite new novels and non-fiction books were left out. After the jump, we right the Times‘ wrongs in a list of 10 more books from 2010 that you need to read, from the tale of an Irish prep school to a handful of excellent memoirs to the real story of riot grrrl.
There are many writers, editors, and publishers featured in True Prep, Lisa Birnbach’s follow-up to the original blue blood Bible, 1980′s The Official Preppy Handbook. In a chapter entitled “The True Pantheon,” Birnbach sets her laurel wreath around the privileged heads of Ben Bradlee, Alfred A. Knopf, Paul Rudnick, Eric Segal, and even Dr. Seuss. And, bien sûr, John Updike, Edith Wharton, and F. Scott Fitzgerald also get their dues. But who are the preppy writers of Generations X and Y? Who will carry on the gin-soaked torch of those gone before? Here’s a partial list of prep-schoolers, Ivy Leaguers, and dapper literati who are turning out some of the most exciting American fiction on the current lit scene.
The recent showdown between Jezebel and The Daily Show got us thinking about our own favorite writers of the fairer sex. To show our support, we thought we’d give a shout-out to the female writers who currently have us crushing, wordsmith-style. We kept things simple, sticking to living authors only (sorry Louisa May Alcott), and in no way mean for this to be a definitive list of the “best” women writers. After the jump, our top picks for the lovely ladies who leave us weak at the literary knees. And of course, let us know in the comments if we’ve missed your object of authorly affection.
During the summertime most people opt for mindless, easy-to-read books to page through while sunning themselves on the sand. Not exactly the John Grisham or Sophie Kinsella type? Uphold your brainy reputation and choose from the mix of newish releases we’ve pulled together for the benefit of beach blanket bookworms everywhere!
Welcome to the first edition of the Flavorpill Book Club. Why are we launching a book club? Because we’re an office full of huge readers always looking for recommendations, and we’ve noticed that most of you guys are too. Why did we choose Sloane Crosley’s second collection of humorous personal essays, How Did You Get This Number, as our first selection? Because three of our editors happened to be reading it at the same time — and they all loved it. When does that happen?
So here’s how this is going to work: Click through to read more about why this is the book all of your friends will be talking about this summer. Go out and buy a copy of the book. Read it. If you’ve got a question for Sloane, leave it as a comment here or send an email to tips [at] flavorpill [dot] com. (We’d also like to hear what you think about our selection.) We’ll be emailing her our favorite questions at the end of the month, and featuring her responses, along with any choice bits of commentary from you guys, in a followup post.
Here’s a challenge: Can you identify some of contemporary literature’s most famous voices from just six words of their life story? We’ve pulled some of our favorite pithy memoirs from It All Changed in an Instant (SMITH Magazine’s new sequel to Not Quite What I Was Planning), and blacked out the attribution to make things interesting. If you’re feeling stumped, don’t feel bad (and look at the tags on this post for hints), some of them are deceptively simple.
So would you believe me anyway? – James Frey
Heart fattens, skin thins. Who knew? – Sloane Crosley
, Lisa Birnbach’s follow-up to the original blue blood Bible, 1980′s 
. In a chapter entitled “The True Pantheon,” Birnbach sets her laurel wreath around the privileged heads of Ben Bradlee, Alfred A. Knopf, Paul Rudnick, Eric Segal, and even Dr. Seuss. And, bien sûr, John Updike, Edith Wharton, and F. Scott Fitzgerald also get their dues. But who are the preppy writers of Generations X and Y? Who will carry on the gin-soaked torch of those gone before? Here’s a partial list of prep-schoolers, Ivy Leaguers, and dapper literati who are turning out some of the most exciting American fiction on the current lit scene.
, as our first selection? Because three of our editors happened to be reading it at the same time — and they all loved it. When does that happen?
(SMITH Magazine’s new sequel to 
), and blacked out the attribution to make things interesting. If you’re feeling stumped, don’t feel bad (and look at the tags on this post for hints), some of them are deceptively simple.
