Moving Day, 2

In case you still check this occasionally, I'm over here now.

Moving Day

Friends,

BOMM has been good to us all, but we're moving over to new digs. Why? Well, partly because since I rarely talk mustache anymore, maybe it's time to quit pretending to the mustache throne.
And also, I think, because I'm a little bored with this one.

So, here's the link to where I'll be.

Slender Volume.

I'm still moving into that space so excuse the mess for now and I have limited access to the internet, so it's going to be a slow process, believe me.

Also, I will not close out BOMM because for some reason 18 posts of mine didn't import over to SL, and I don't know which ones. Plus, it fucked up a lot of my pictures. So if you're looking for old posts, look here. If you're looking for new content, please, follow the link.

Thanks all. See you on the other platform.

Mustache of All Years

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
Literature professor.
War hero.

viva el mustache

Keeper

Friends,

I've sort of fallen for this book blog called The Millions. You probably have heard about it or have been reading it, but it's pretty cool I think.

Anyway, while reading my way through that blog, I found an article about this guy who has his own blog about reading his way through the Best American Short Stories from 1978 to 2009. I like that, too...though he is reading them at a slower pace than I would like.

Either the writer of the BASS blog or one of the fine folks at The Millions created a google document that shows the title, author and gender of each story that has appeared in the pages of the BASS since 1978. It does not include the Roll of Honor in the back, just the ones that have been republished.

From that google document, I made the below Wordle using the titles of the stories that appeared. The most frequent word for a title (not including articles and such)? Life. It has appeared 9 times. The words in the absolute smallest type on the Wordle have only appeared once, so the range is from 9 to 1. How the Wordle program chose the single-serving words they did for this mapping, I don't know. I find it is interesting "Elvis" has appeared in the title of a BASS just as often as the word "Woman."

Click the small one to be taken to the Wordle site for the largest, clearest view. Go to the bottom to see it slightly blown up for your convenience.

viva BASS

Real Gem

Friends,

Tell you what, I about lost my mind yesterday with the book buying that I did. I have no idea how much money I spent, but I feel as if it was worth whatever cost I paid. I blame Seth, who was in town and shopping for his PhD book list. So we scoured the city's used joints for books.

Here's the pile I acquired yesterday and this is not including the two most recent gets, Julie & Julia (what, the movie is cute) and Not That Kind of Girl.
A lot of them I only paid a dollar for, like that Best American 1996 at the bottom there, which was purchased to replace my current copy that happens to have a ripped back cover. But there's a lot of awesome in there, I think. Like the hardcover In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders that has that awesome story Adams in it. Sure, my copy has a bit of a busted spine, but that's okay with me.

You probably also noticed the three Harry Crews books on there. Two of them, Florida Frenzy & Blood and Grits are works of non-fiction. The real surprise find is The Gospel Singer. The version I found is a British reprinting of it from 1995, I believe. And it includes this strange rare story of Crews called Where Does One Go When There's No Place Left to Go? that's a kind of metafiction that stars a writer named Harry Crews being kidnapped by characters of his stories (according to HarryCrews.com). I don't know what this Gospel Singer edition I have is worth to collectors, but I paid 6 bucks. Even if it is only worth 6 bucks, or less, I'm pleased as a pig in shit about finding it. God bless Madison's used bookstores.

But really, the real gem was finding a copy of Roger Sheffer's Borrowed Voices. I hadn't expected to find it, but I did so I had to pick it up. Here's a picture I scanned from the book of our man Roger taken I would assume 1988 since that is when Borrowed Voices was released, according to the front of the book that I bought (though Amazon says a much later date). Look how young he is in this picture.


viva used bookstores