Meg Reid 🦦

The voice that won over Ira Glass hasn't changed much since 1992. It's more subdued than it was in riotously funny essays like "Me Talk Pretty One Day," but the wry wisecracking, the deliberate bitchiness — those qualities are still in evidence. Still, in "Cash and Carry," when Sedaris critiques the phrasing on a homeless man's cardboard sign ("It should be 'Help one of the homeless,' I wanted to tell him. Otherwise it sounds like you’re going to take whatever you collect and distribute it to other people in need."), I sympathize with the guy's response that he hopes Sedaris burns in hell. His essays often derive their humor from catty, judgmental moments like that one, and so it's notable that this is the first time I can remember reading one and being firmly on the other person's side. The tone may not have changed, but Sedaris's positioning inarguably has. The very bitchiness which once made his voice feel so fresh has become a commonplace in humor writing; writers from Tina Fey to Samantha Irby have surpassed him in their own fluent versions of it. Watching him uphold it now with such determination feels like watching your dad try to squeeze into the leisure suit he last wore in 1971. Sedaris spent so many years assuring us he was an incurious curmudgeon that he seems to have talked himself into becoming one, at least on the page.

i wrote about why david sedaris’s writing leaves me cold now
www.patreon.com/posts/152798...

Am I the only person who gets random zoom spam? like, I get registered for a zoom about AI and manufacturing that I didn't register for and it's automatically added to my calendar? This is in addition to the fifty emails a day offering line of credit and other sketchy business offerings.

the backup is pretty good, but I can't figure out why Montembeault is still in the lineup

Time was, the habs/leafs matches were the highlight of my season. Just absolutely no spark in the team this year.

(they may tie this up and / or win, but their play is just so...sad)

god, the leafs are such a depressing watch this year.

We only print in the US and our most dependable just unexpectedly fell behind by 2 weeks. Our POD seemed to get through a huge logjam and books we ordered in early Feb are just releasing now. I know anything Ingram-related was really affected by the ice storms but not sure what else is going on.

Would love to hear from other folks, but printers across the board have been extremely backed up for us this month. I don't know if it's because of tariffs and global uncertainty or the storms earlier in the month? But it has been pretty stressful.

publishing people know the singular high of "the books are in the warehouse."

nothin better than standing regular-style in my favorite restaurant. i love to cross that threshold and plant my feet in a loose but vigilant straddle, like anyone would

wait, there kind of is an unspoken one?? what do you mean, john?!

I absolutely do not got to, Brad! (I also use QuickBooks, so I got this twice today...)

I love getting the quarterly email from corporations saying GOOD NEWS, they're rolling out lots of new AI features that will make their platform unusable, even if you turn them off, and THAT'S NOT ALL, my monthly plan is going up by $20 to reflect all these new features!!

2026 being what it is, the atlantic division standings are now officially completely upside down (complimentary)

Could an empire in decline do THIS? *launches deeply unpopular invasion cementing status as lunatic-led pariah state, its not clear what kind of move i was trying to do*

The murdaugh crossover was unexpected but also shouldn't be...

Not my experience. Grew up in a tiny town in western Maine and regardless of whether you're there or in a city like Boston, no one spontaneously talks to you in the stores. It's considered rude!

I was raised in the north and have lived in the south for seventeen years and this is THE biggest difference in daily life. I couldn't figure out why people were talking to me in the stores when I moved here and now when I go home, people look at me crazy when I yap at them.

I know a few folks who had their first in the early 1960s who were able to get a booster here, so it's worth asking!

Trying to explain to an intern why PM announcements are the way they are by saying, "so we used to have these things called fax machines..."

new pb design from me for HOTHOUSE BLOOM! Coming in August (witha sneaky deep red duplex cover)

[john mulaney voice] "YOU SPENT IT ALREADY?"

They announce the outbreak spots on the radio daily here (ie "an infected person ate at the burger king on highway 11") and I've had a background dread that it might happen in my bookshop. Hasn't happened yet so I guess the anti-vaxxers aren't big readers lol

The measles outbreak here in SC (that started in the ukrainian churches and charter schools) is slowing down after 1000+ cases. The fact that it's now picking up speed in Utah says a lot about the damage the no-proof religious exemption for vaccines will inflict on a generation of children.

(but we're also a nonprofit, so the economics are very different)

Wow that is some 90s design! Well, for fwiw, our two top selling frontlist novels last year were both under 60k. We do them in paper over boards (the jacket costs as much as the book!) and price them at $25, which is sort of between pb and hc. It's worked great for us.

right now, with the state of the world, that's the sweet spot for me for reading in general. I envy the schattenfroh crowd but I have trouble caring past that point. (This is if I'm reading for acquisitions, but also somewhat true in reading for pleasure, too.)

It's always funny to watch the inverse in paperback, if they even go to pb--tight lines to make it as short as possible. Sometimes the books are half the size they were in hc.

I think the same can be said for agented novels, that often seem like they may have been good at 60k but they were told to inflate to 90k. No one wants to read 100 bad pages.

100% agree.

(It's all l dumb economics, be the problem is if you pay a lot in advance and need to put $32+ on each copy to even start to recoup, you need to make sure that book is 250+ pages in hardcover, which means, stretched text, big leading btw lines, groundwood paper [lots of air in it])