I shit you not.  Watch the video.

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For those of you not in the know, Old Spice, the deodorant company, has recently sponsored a series of ads featuring the guy you see in the video below saying hilarious, manly stuff. Yesterday they ran a marathon, viral campaign on youtube featuring videos of him responding to comments on twitter, facebook, and reddit. [...]

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The Printer’s Ball is coming up! Don’t miss out on one of the most fabulous lit events in Chicago. Click above for the full schedule.

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In one of the most eloquent and information-packed epistolary rebuttals I’ve ever come across, Commissioner Mary A. Dempsey handily puts Fox News in its place.
“The public library is supported by taxpayers for the common good of all the people of Chicago – just like public school. We don’t ask our schools to make profit. Neither [...]

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My level of disgust over this would be hard to approximate.  Despite rising rates of library attendance and the fact that libraries are fantastic resources for citizens of all stripes, Fox News is wondering if they’re a waste of our tax money.
I can think of many things our government has blown money on in the [...]

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The Awful Possibilities is the car accident that you can’t tear your eyes from as you drive by it on the free way. It’s the horror movie you started watching and now, damn it, you have to finish. It’s the unsettling chunk of story you overhear on the train that fills the rest [...]

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This isn’t lit related, but I still think it’s cool. And anyway, aren’t storms perfect reading weather?

Lightning strikes three of the tallest buildings in Chicago at the same time! from Craig Shimala on Vimeo.

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Chris Force, editor and publisher of ALARM, a Chicago-published magazine focusing on music, art, and culture shares how the Chicago Public Library helped get his publication off the ground.

Chicago Public Library powers ALARM Magazine from Not What You Think on Vimeo.

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Russell Smith writes some interesting editorial on the state of sex in the publishing industry inspired by the firing of Penguin Canada’s CEO David Davidar for sexual harassment.
“Despite the staggering ratio of brainy beauties to tweedy egotists in this industry, you would be surprised by how little sex there really is. It’s not exactly rock [...]

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Poetry–sadly the bastard child of the publishing industry these days–has a place close to my heart. As a longtime poet (since 2nd grade!) and an MA degree holder in English literature with a specialization in poetry, I feel qualified to adjudicate a book on the study and appreciation of the art. In addition [...]

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Local Author Colleen Taylor Sen recently sat down with us to answer a few questions about her new book Curry: A Global History.
PC:  What inspired you to write a book about curry around the world?
Sen:  The short answer is that the publisher (Reaktion Books) asked me to write it as part of a series [...]

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Tragic and inspiring, the story of fifteen-year-old Hadiya living and blogging in Mosul, Iraq is presented in print form by Haymarket Books, Chicago’s own progressive and nonprofit book publisher.  IraqiGirl is a series of edited—for grammar—blog posts from Hadiya as she attempts to make sense of what is happening in native country.   As an American [...]

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I found a copy of The Shortpants Observer, issue number one, on the free table at Quimby’s (glorious) Free Comic Book Day table.  I devoured the whole issue that day and loved it.  Published by Short Pants Press, an independent Chicago publisher focused on comics and graphic work of all kinds, this journal is a [...]

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I’ve never owned a car, and I can happily say that being carless in Chicago has been a much easier experience than anywhere else I’ve lived.  For this reason, I was delighted to find a copy of Carless in Chicago by Jason Rothstein, published by Chicago publisher Lake Claremont Press, on my doorstep.  If you’re [...]

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Chicago author Colleen Taylor Sen’s Curry: A Global History is a wonderful examination of curry throughout the ages. Full of pictures, the book details the history of curry as it spread throughout the world. The book also features several curry recipes, both old and new. Intrigued, I set off to recreate the [...]

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Nancy Friday’s Beyond My Control is a follow-up to her groundbreaking 1973 book My Secret Garden, which detailed real women’s sexual fantasies that they had shared with the author through letters and video-recorded interviews. My Secret Garden was a groundbreaking book at the time, though today you might find an average issue of Cosmopolitan [...]

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While I’m still a bit unclear about how dirty this gets, I can tell you that the Poetry Brothel is a group of artists whose mission is to develop intimacy, community, passion, service and transformation of environment and self through poetry.  Their events feature one on one sessions replete with soul baring (though what other [...]

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The Printers Row Lit Fest was filmed by C-Span, and they have hours and hours of great video from the event that you can watch on their website.

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