books @ Vice

a weekly series of posts on books and shit


(22) Making Up Bands in Your Brain While High
(21) Three Thin Weird Good Books About Sex And Power
(20) Famous Authors' Thoughts While Being Photographed
(19) Books with Blurbs by Bono, Thomas Kinkade, and Tyler Perry
(18) Cormac McCarthy vs. Three 6 Mafia
(17) How To Write a Novel About Murdering Nazis
(16) Thinking about Suicide in the Breakroom
(15) Beautiful Gross People on Notebook Paper
(14) Cleverbot on Contemporary Literature, Dating, and God
(13) Get Your MFA From L. Ron Hubbard
(12) Here Is a Book That Wrote Itself
(11) The Tiny Massive Lardfields of Aase Berg
(10) The Top Ten Most Frequently Played Songs on Several Famous Authors' iTunes
(9) The English Language Needs a New Dad
(8) Reconsidering Perec's Library
(7) "The Shining 2 by Jonathan Franzen" by Stephen King
(6) I Talked Books to Bros on Chatroulette
(5) Nikanor Teratologen's Rolodex of Atrocities
(4) Selected Unread Books I've Had On My Self For 5+ Years and Why I Haven't Read Them yet And/Or What I Think They Might Be About
(3) Injecting Mercury
(2) The Multiplying Hells of Pierre Guyotat
(1) All Language Is Murder

a section deleted from Nothing appears at the newly relaunched Fanzine, concerning Joseph Cornell, Heather Christle, Joyelle McSweeney, and James Joyce: Hybrid Locations: Thoughts on Dreaming or Insomnia and Language

Anatomy Courses

Available today from Lazy Fascist, cowritten with Sean Kilpatrick.

Many thanks to Cameron Pierce for releasing this slim strange book I never thought would be released.

More information.

Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia

My first book of nonfiction came out this week.



Review in Time

Review in New York Times (Editor's Choice)

Review in Creative Loafing

Review/interview at Fanzine

Review in Atlanta Journal & Constitution

Review at Onion A/V Club

Interview in Interview

Radio Interview on The Brian Lehrer Show (WNYC)

Podcast at Other People

* * *

You can get Nothing now at Amazon, SPD, stores, etc.

i gave my dad some candy

MOM: What do you say when someone gives you something you want?
DAD: I want this.

30 Under 30

i have extra copies of this 30 Under 30 Anthology of younger innovative writers I edited with Lily Hoang, out a month or so ago. if you would like one, paypal $12 to blakebutler [at] gmail [dot] com (shipping included)


"30 Under 30 offers an impressive cross-section of innovative American fiction by young writers. If you're tired of the 'authorized version' and want a sense of where fiction is really going, what its future shapes and forms are likely to be, this is the place to start." - Brian Evenson, author of Fugue State and The Open Curtain.

"Cops in the clouds, a father and daughter’s mythic severing, fictions of spreadsheets, a story ending in future tense. For those young enough still to live in language, words are tangible as slivers, as hard candy in the mouth. These thirty assemble the outlandish, the ecstatic, the wild, and there’s a conviction they can just do this." - R. M. Berry, author of Frank and Dictionary of Modern Anguish

CONTRIBUTORS: Joanna Ruocco » Brian Oliu » Michael J. Lee » Angi Becker Stevens » Shane Jones » Devin Gribbons » Christina Kloess » James Yeh » William Seabrook » Danielle Adair » Megan Milks » Rachel Glaser » Michael Stewart » Sean Kilpatrick » Andrea Kneeland » Zach Dodson » Beth Couture » Mike Young » Kathleen Rooney & Elisa Gabbert » Joshua Cohen » Matt Bell » Adam Good » Andrew Farkas » Jaclyn Dwyer » Ryan Downey » Ryan Call » Kristina Born » Conor Madigan » Rebecca Jean Kraft » Evenlyn Hampton

what would happen if a private source offered $5 million to 1st American who can convince someone in their family to commit suicide on film

This story is called wrote a new story today

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you can now get my book EVER in ebook form for $6 from Calamari Press

In the Heart of the Country by Coetzee is really fantastic

things are gpomg tp get worse arent they

sometimes
book
reviews
make
me
wonder
if
there
are
really
any
people

"There was a wall in him that no one reached. Not even Clara, though she assumed it had deformed him. A tiny stone swallowed years back that had grown with him and which he carried around because he could not shed it. His motive for hiding it had probably extinguished itself years earlier. . . . Patrick and his small unimportant stone. It had entered him at the wrong time in his life. Then it had been a flint of terror. He could have easily turned aside at the age of seven or twenty, and just spat it out and kept on walking, and forgotten it by the next street corner.

"So we are built."

There is No Year reading tour

Going out for a little stretch on the road to do reading junk from There is No Year; if you are nearby, would be rad to hang out!

Monday, April 11, 2011
POWELL'S BOOKSTORE
1005 West Burnside Portland, OR 97210
7:30

Tuesday, April 12, 2011
UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE
4326 University Way Seattle, WA 98105
7:00

Thursday, April 14, 2011
CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE
261 Columbus AVE San Francisco, CA 94133-4586
7:00

Friday, April 15, 2011
SKYLIGHT BOOKS
1818 N. Vermont AVE Los Angeles, CA 90027
7:30

Sunday, April 17, 2011
Largehearted Lit series - at WORD
126 Franklin ST Brooklyn, NY 11222
7:30

Monday, April 18, 2011
MCNALLY JACKSON BOOKS
52 Prince ST New York, NY 10012
7:00

Wednesday, April 20, 2011
BROOKLINE BOOKSMITH
279 Harvard St Brookline, MA 02446
7:00