45th Parallel Communications

Don't miss the NYC launch party for COME HERE OFTEN?, hosted by Black Balloon Publishing. 

"2080: A Golden Age of Informational Fluidity. For the benefit of those people at future-of-publishing panels—there’s always one, for some reason—who insist it’s really not about the text but the smell of the book, books will by this time be available exclusively as lines of fragrances. Subsequently, humans will modify themselves into a species with a powerful olfactory sense, able to read underwater by decoding strings of pheronomes. Aroma-bibliography will triumph, as vast epics are composed for newly developed scent receptors, transforming the rising seas into a giant bath of community-assisted transmedia content. Also around this time, the oral literature of dolphins will be deciphered and will turn out, inexplicably, to be all about vampires."

Um having serious issues not buying this right now. $450 is totally reasonable for an old sign, right!?!? (at Rejuvenation)

Gorgeous new home of @chinmusicpress in Seattle's Pike Place Market. Brought me to tears as the space is 9 years in the making and this incredible small press deserves it! #latergram

#Repost from @kpwerker: On @jakovitz's recommendation, I've started reading this. So far, it's riveting. #book #reading

Not nearly all of them but looking good! #bookshelfie

“Accessible and beautifully rendered; highly recommended.” (via Summer Best Debuts | Library Journal selects Claire Hajaj's ISHMAEL'S ORANGES)

"Dan Washburn has found a strikingly original device to portray recent developments in China: It's all about golf." (via Book Review: 'The Forbidden Game' by Dan Washburn - WSJ)

"There are always challenges to reporting in China, but with golf the kind of legally nebulous world that it exists in creates another layer of complexity." (via Writing China: Dan Washburn, ‘The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream’ - China Real Time Report - WSJ)

“You can still say that statistically zero percent of the population plays golf. But the thing about China – statistically zero percent of one point four billion could still be… you know, a decent number.” (via Dan Washburn's new book on golf course ban in China | Marketplace.org)

Fingers crossed tightly!! RG @ninawyo: PEN shortlist announcement. Award announced on July 30. Keep fingers crossed!

Happiness arrived in the mail today. Advance review copy of Mike Meginnis' debut novel, FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY, out October 2014 from Black Balloon Publishing.

RG @sheilab27: Is there anything nicer than a surprise present that comes with pink ribbon? #perfectforaneditor

The quixotic rise of golf in China—where Mao Zedong once lambasted putting as a bourgeois pastime—is the subject of a new book by the Asia Society’s Dan Washburn. In The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream, a charming and accessible work, Washburn follows the lives of three men whose careers are shaped by the sport: an American golf course designer who finds work in China, a budding Chinese tournament golfer, and a farmer whose land is converted into fairways. (via Building Golf Courses in China: An Illegal and Booming Industry - Businessweek)

Compelling reaction to the Perseus-Hachette-Ingram news from Melville House's Dennis Johnson: "Flash forward a mere seven years and a similar story about control of the distribution of many of our leading indie publishers is once again being buried. That is, it should have been part of the story of yesterday’s sale of Perseus to Hachette, but it really wasn’t." (via The part of the Hachette-Perseus deal you didn't hear about: It involves 400 leading indie publishers » MobyLives)