or 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. He said all kinds of amazing stuff, including responding to Apolo Ohno, GQ, and even giving a marriage proposal. Here’s what he has to say about libraries:

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.

n 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 should we ask it of the public library. As journalist Walter Cronkite once remarked, “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”

Finally, like thousands of our fellow City employees, the management of the Chicago Public Library is taking 24 unpaid holidays and furlough days this year to help close the budget gap and to keep city services, including libraries, operating for the public. Interestingly, I was on an unpaid furlough day when I watched your story last evening. And I had just returned from the annual library conference in Washington DC, a trip I paid for myself, not with taxpayer dollars.”

y 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 last, oh, ten years but libraries certainly are not one of them.

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 of your day with wondering about what in the hell those few, truncated utterances could have meant.

It’s bizarre, weighty, and abstract–at times, even grotesque.

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his 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.

hris 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.

ussell 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 ’n’ roll. A guy who really can’t resist acting on every romantic inclination is in the wrong business.”

oetry–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 to reading lots of poetry (most recently in the form of Poetry Magazine), I’ve also read quite a few books on the study of poetry and poetry scholarship–and usually, they’re all pretty terrible.

Normally, when I read a book about poetry, rather than a book of poems, it’s bad. It’s always way too teachy, too middle-school-humanities class, too–dare I say it–boring. I’ve always loved poetry, but I’ve rarely even liked reading books about poetry. Thankfully, Chicago publisher Rose Metal Press’ new book Field Guide to Prose Poetry is unlike most other books in this vein in that it’s good, very good.

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ocal 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 on the global history of various foods. The longer answer is that I have written a lot not just about Indian but Asian food in general and am fascinated by the way dishes are transformed as they travel around the world.
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ragic 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 reader, I was intrigued to read the details of her and her family’s lives as they attempted to live in a war torn country.

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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 small compilation of the work of several Chicago comic artists.

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’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 currently carless or thinking about giving up your car for good, this book will prove to be an invaluable resource for getting around in Chicago.

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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 book’s recipe for Malaysian Nonya-style Chicken Curry. The result was quite a success. More pictures from my culinary adventure after the jump.

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ancy 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 to be more risqué. Its depictions of female sexual fantasies, which included rape, lesbian sex, and extremely explicit and specific desires, served to prove both that women have fantasies, and that their fantasies are just as colorful, intricate, and transgressive as male sexual fantasies. As mundane as this idea may appear today, it was both liberating and eye-opening at the time of its debut. Thirty years after its publication, Beyond My Control picks up where it left off.

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hile 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 kinds of baring is yet to be disclosed).

The group is looking to add local poets to their performance at the House of Blues on July 10th. Email at thepoetrybrothel@gmail.com if you’re interested. More details on the event’s time and price will be reported as they come up.

he 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.

This year’s Printers Row Lit Fest poster.

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