Free Choose Your Own Adventure #1: iPod version! (via Rarely Likable)

Allen Barra wins the award for this week’s smackdown.

Martin Amis answers questions from readers. Hilarious results ensue.

I’m not one to plug my fictive endeavors (and frankly I’m still bemused that I’ve been invited to do this, perhaps because they associated the “drinks” part with me; who knows?), but this is a reminder to any and all interested parties that I will be making an appearance at Writers with Drinks on Saturday, January 20, 2007 at The Rickshaw Stop at 7 PM, along with writers who are much better at this fiction thing than I am. In fact, the hell with me. Check out this lineup: Michelle Tea! Andrew Sean Greer! Kim Stanley Robinson! Michael Blumlein! Justin Chin! I mean, how can you not swoon over that roster?

I will be reading the first chapter of my novel in progress. There was an impromptu test reading over the weekend, largely because Mr. Asher coaxed me to read it in front of a small group of literary types.

The Writers with Drinks performance will be considerably more high-octane, and it will also feature a live reprise of Part One of “The Neurotic Chronicles” (for those who haven’t heard it) and possibly some audience participation.

Check it out! There may also be another very special guest.

Scott Esposito examines W.G. Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction* in the wake of this May 2003 Vollmann review of the same.

* — Apologies for the previous error. Been reading ’bout dat crazy Darwin guy.