Lit Bits & A Bit About Jet Planes

• I am back in LA and have much to say both about NY and still, yes still, about BEA. Much of these insights feel like bits about your book in progress - you don't want to say them out loud because then they might be lost forever.  But I will say them, I will, in a few wrap-ups late today and tomorrow.
• On the plane I read the New Yorker Haruki Murakami piece on writing and running. As I run regularly, I kind of dug this piece. Yet as I've struggled to write novels my entire life, his "oh I just decided one day to write a book and look how good I turned out to be" grated on me a bit. (Note: I find the New Yorker abstracts to be oddly, unintentionally - right? - humorous.)
• James Wood's "Holiday in Hellmouth" piece, in the same New Yorker issue, left me less agitated but then, a few hours after finishing it, I found myself strangely annoyed at the whole examination.
• The week in bookish event is up at LAist. Though the week is nearly over, there are some excellent lit events still to come. Namely: Sarah Hall and Jacob Polley reading their work on Sunday, 3pm, at Hammer Museum. Will you be there?
• I have finished All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison and will provide a rundown soon. The short of it: please go read it so we can discuss. There are moments of great tenderness, of gaping sadness, and then, out of nowhere, moments of such camp and silliness I laughed out loud on the plane and people were staring. Staring. I don't laugh out loud that often. Certainly not on planes.
• I have three pages left of Ceridwen Dovey's Blood Kin and I am amazed and excited and wowed by the quality of the writing as well as the construction of the plot and the careful unfolding of each layer. This is a tight, focused, beautiful book and I'm thankful to Sarah Weinman for pointing it out.
• LA Weekly interviews Mark Sarvas about TEV, about Harry, Revised and about that ridiculous NYT review.
• Not literary, but so what: I saw three stunt planes or fighter jets or similar hurtling through the skies whilst cruising on our plane at seemingly high altitudes. One passed by and I thought I'd imagined it. Twenty minutes later, another shot past (this one bright red with black smoke trailing behind). Ten minutes after that, another whizzed by - all going in the same direction, all headed who knows where to do who knows what. I'm not sure what they were or why there were there, but it was incredible to witness all alone, as I sat on a plane full of sleeping people who didn't even notice. Have you ever seen such a thing while flying? It was a secret sign to me I'm sure - of what I'm less sure.