(View entire post here)

Michael Taeckens, editor of Love Is a Four-Letter Word, has put together a schedule of different writers from the book for the week of July 27th If you have any questions for any of the authors, add a comment to any of their posts.

Here is more information on Love Is a Four-Letter Word:

From Junot Díaz, Lynda Barry, Gary Shteyngart, and Kate Christensen to popular up-and-comers like Dan Kennedy, Wendy McClure, and Brock Clarke, Love Is a Four-Letter Word is a dead-on contemporary collection of true stories of seduction, heartbreak, and regret. Fearlessly revealing their shattered hearts and crushed egos; their indiscretions and indignities; their delusions, desperation, and disappointments, these talented writers capture the dark side of love in prose ranging from comic to poetic, poignant to cringe-inducing. Also featuring three cartoon/ graphic essays as a sixteen-page color insert, this anthology is perfect for anyone who's ever loved and lost.

This week's bloggers:

Monday - D. E. Rasso
Tuesday - Wendy McClure
Wednesday - Said Sayrafiezadeh
Thursday - Said Sayrafiezadeh
Friday - Maud Newton

(View entire post here)

Daniel Levitin is our guest blogger during the week of July 27th If you have any questions Daniel Levitin, add a comment to any of his posts.

Here is more information on The World in Six Songs:

The author of the New York Times bestseller This Is Your Brain on Music reveals music's role in the evolution of human culture-and "will leave you awestruck" (The New York Times)

Daniel J. Levitin's astounding debut bestseller, This Is Your Brain on Music, enthralled and delighted readers as it transformed our understanding of how music gets in our heads and stays there. Now in his second New York Times bestseller, his genius for combining science and art reveals how music shaped humanity across cultures and throughout history.

Dr. Levitin identifies six fundamental song functions or types-friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love-then shows how each in its own way has enabled the social bonding necessary for human culture and society to evolve. He shows, in effect, how these "six songs" work in our brains to preserve the emotional history of our lives and species.

Dr. Levitin combines cutting-edge scientific research from his music cognition lab at McGill University and work in an array of related fields; his own sometimes hilarious experiences in the music business; and illuminating interviews with musicians such as Sting and David Byrne, as well as conductors, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. The World in Six Songs is, ultimately, a revolution in our understanding of how human nature evolved-right up to the iPod.

EXCERPTS

EXCERPT Borrowing Brilliance David Kord Murray (Gotham)

EXCERPT No Time for Tact Larry Winget (Gotham)

EXCERPT The Conversation Hill Harper (Gotham)

EXCERPT How to Take Over Teh Wurld Professor Happycat (Gotham)

RGG College Girl Patricia Weitz (Riverhead)

RGG Everything Matters! Ron Currie, Jr. (Viking)

VIDEOS

VIDEO Skykeepers Jessica Andersen (Signet)

(View entire post here)

When I was in my 20s and 30s, I fell in love with Zen Buddhism, which, in retrospect, was a perfectly Scandinavian thing to do. One of the Zen meditations I learned was: Imagine a future, where all your dreams come true. Especially at times when things aren't going well in your life, spending ten minutes each morning focusing on a tomorrow where every hope is realized can be nourishing and energizing, a powerful salve for wounded souls. So this is a focus meme I've used pretty regularly over the past twenty-five years, meaning thousands of times closing my eyes, and imagining a perfect world. 

Now that Rocket Men hit the New York Times' bestseller list the first week it went on sale, and is getting acclaim beyond what anyone ever could have ever guessed, nearly all of my professional dreams have in fact come true ... and I can't believe, after all those times of imagining what it would be like, how absolutely wrong I was in those meditative states.

It turns out that, when almost all your dreams come true, you only get to sleep about four hours a night, but on tour you have to be up and energetic and charming and focused and ready to deliver the right material in the right form on a moment's notice for hour after hour to  nonstop all day. This means you flit back and forth, drunk with exhaustion and ferociously alert, on a personality seesaw, at the same time that you keep forgetting what time zone you're in. The hotel phone rings, and a voice says, "We're calling to make sure you'll be ready for the show," and you say, "What time is this show?" and the voice says, "It's a 7:22 show" and you say, "But, what time is it now?" and the voice says, "It's 7:12, your time," and you say, "Oh no problem, I'll be ready."