13:

1 Pear Noir! 3 is in. And on. It includes excerpts from A State of Unbelief and Hawthorn Blossoms masquerading under the book's discarded alternate title. It also includes amazing words from Jimmy Chen, Eric Beeny, Michelle Reale, Robert Hinderliter, John Dermot Woods, Audri Sousa, Lee Minh Sloca, Chris Higgs, and on. Higgs's climax was infect, or remix was perfect. He made me want to start reading it aloud halfway through. He made me want to read it again all the way through.

2 Kitty Snacks 1 is now a free download.

3 I went to a library sale yesterday and bought Susan Sontag's On Photography, Jesse Ball's Samedi the Deafness, and Brian Evenson's Father of Lies for 25 cents. I already own Father of Lies, but I couldn't pass it up for 1/3 of a quarter, so I bought it for you, one of you. Send me an email with an address, and I'll send the book to the address. It doesn't look like a library book. No stickers or stamps. There must have been a gift inscription or bookplate on the first blank page because someone ripped the page out, but the remainder is intact. There is a remainder mark. My email address is at the bottom of this page.

4 What kind of bees make milk?

5 Justin Taylor executed an anonymous review of The Book of Jokes by momus for The Believer. I read the book immediately after reading the review. While I was a bit jealous of Taylor's blind reading, his review got me to open the book, and once it was open, [insert punchline].

6 Here's the Dalkey Archive description for The Book of Jokes: "Imagine a universe where every joke you’ve ever heard is solid, real, and occasionally dangerous—and all happening, one after the other, to the same small group of people. Detailing a series of filthy and ludicrous episodes in the life of a single family, saddled with a super-eccentric, sexually rapacious father, The Book of Jokes tells the story of the youth and education of a bland young boy doomed to record—in an incongruously serious, autobiographical mode—all the ridiculous incidents befalling his household. With their lives dictated by set ups and punchlines, the boy’s family quickly becomes luridly dysfunctional, and he realizes that the only way to escape his tragicomic fate is by trying to take control of the joke-telling himself. Channeling the spirits of Chaucer, Rabelais, Flann O’Brien, and Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, the Vatican secretary who compiled the first known book of jokes in 1451, The Book of Jokes is a happy raspberry in the face of life as we know and tell it."

7 Here's an interview with Nick Currie. If you have an hour and six minutes, you can listen to the entirety. Otherwise, you can skip to an hour and three minutes to hear a bit about The Book of Jokes.

8 All manner of photo crashing.

9 I quite enjoyed Joanna Ruocco's The Mothering Coven. And I really enjoyed her story in Caketrain. And I absolutely enjoyed her Unicorns at Fanzine. Read Unicorns here.

10 Joanna Ruocco reads from The Mothering Coven at Apostrophe Cast.