Monthly Archive for August, 2008

Deb Olin Unferth Event for Vacation

Sep ’08
27
7:00 pm

In Vacation:
A man follows his wife. The wife follows a stranger. The stranger leaves town and the man goes after him, determined to settle the score. But the man is not the only one looking for the stranger, and the stranger has troubles of his own. Amid all this, the earth quakes, a boy leaps out a window, and a dolphin swims free. Of course people have adventures of this kind—of course! of course!—but we’ve never heard of it before. With deadpan humor and skewed wordplay, Deb Olin Unferth weaves a mystery of hope and heartbreak.

Deb Olin Unferth  is a University of Kansas professor and Pushcart Prize winner. She has been published in Harper’s, NOON, 3rd Bed, McSweeney’s, Fence, and other places. Vacation is her first novel.

Deb Olin Unferth will read and signs copies of Vacation at the event.

“Deb Olin Unferth is one of the most daring and entertaining writers in America today. She is an artist who knows that every sentence is an opportunity to have it all — music, invention, narrative drive —  and hers most definitely do. This novel is tricky, odd, unnerving, hilarious, and ultimately quite scary, not to mention very, very moving. We may or may not deserve this Vacation, but we are lucky to have it.”
-SAM LIPSYTE

“Part mystery, part sonata, Unferth writes like a musician plays, weaving images and themes and melodies with these beautifully rhythmic, funny, heart-breaking sentences. The whole novel should be read aloud and relished.”
-AIMEE BENDER

“In visionary, original prose, Deb Olin Unferth’s wonderful, quirky Vacation briskly sends forth its characters on their expectant journeys of self-discovery. Sentence by sentence, Unferth surprises and makes profound sense of what it is to be alive and how easily a lifesuit may be shucked off: “You won’t even feel it.” Loud applause should follow this accomplished —entertaining, funny, sad, solemn—book.”
-CHRISTINE SCHUTT

New Stuff 8/30/2008!

Big weekend, the traditional end of summer and start of the slide or fall, as you will, into winter. Lots of out of towners rolling through, the kids are back in school and gladiator sandals will finally be out of fashion. Now if only we could convince the wicker park hip moms that doublewide strollers in the city are kind of a nuisance life would be good. Anyway here is the new stuff
Continue reading ‘New Stuff 8/30/2008!’

Labor Day Hours

Quimby’s will close at 5pm on Monday, September 1st. Thanks!

Quimby’s Top Ten Best Sellers For the Week of August 17th, 2008 – August 23rd, 2008

1.    Cometbus #51: Loneliness of the Electra Menorah by Aaron Cometbus $3.00
2.    Doris #26 $2.00
3.    Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (Vertigo) $19.99
4.    Mostly True by Bill Daniel $8.00
5.    Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4 by Michael Kupperman (Fantagraphics) $4.50
6.    N Plus 1 Pamphlet Series #2: What We Should Have Known Two Discussions $9.00
7.    Adbusters #79 $8.95
8.    Wax Poetics #30 $9.99
9.    Save My Life by Cody Hudson (Upper Playground) $19.95
10.  Proximity #1 Chicago Issue $10.00

Joe Meno and Arthur Nersesian

Sep ’08
25
7:00 pm

Joe Meno with Arthur Nersesian at Quimby’s!

Join authors Joe Meno and Arthur Nersesian as the read signs copies of their newest books

Demons in the Spring is a collection of twenty short stories by Joe Meno with illustrations by twenty artists from the fine art, graphic art, and comic book worlds–including Charles Burns, Archer Prewitt, Ivan Brunetti, Jay Ryan, Paul Hornschemeier, Anders Nilsen, Geoff McFedtridge, Kelsey Brookes, Kim Hiorthoy, Caroline Hwang, Rachell Sumpter, KOZYNDAN, Evan Hecox, and Cody Hudson.

Oddly modern moments which occur in the most familiar of public places, from offices to airports to schools to zoos to emergency rooms: a young girl who refuses to go anywhere unless she’s dressed as a ghost; a bank robbery in Stockholm gone terribly wrong; a teacher who’s become enamored with the students in his school’s Model United Nations club; a couple affected by a strange malady–a miniature city which has begun to develop in the young woman’s chest, these inventive stories are hilarious, heartbreaking, and unusual. While many of them have never been previously published, others have been featured in the likes of LIT, Other Voices, Swink, TriQuarterly, and McSweeney’s.

Joe Meno is the best-selling author of the novels Hairstyles of the Damned, The Boy Detective Fails, How the Hula Girl Sings, and Tender As Hellfire. He was the winner of the 2003 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago

Arthur Nersesian will also be on hand to read from his newest book The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx, the highly anticipated follow-up to The Swing Voter of Staten Island–the first two installments in Nersesian’s series of novels offering an alternate history of New York: The Five Books of Moses.

Robert Moses was responsible for creating contemporary New York’s infrastructure, but he did so at the cost of destroying neighborhoods. In this novel, Robert has looted his brother Paul’s share of the Moses family fortune, repeatedly blocked his attempts at gaining public office, thwarted his career in the private sector, and set in motion events that will decimate Paul’s home life. Paul Moses’s deep-seated rage metamorphoses into an act of terrorism committed against his brother and against a city that he once cherished.

Although it can be read as a stand-alone novel about Robert and Paul Moses, The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx is also a memory play that follows Uli Sarkisian–the hero of The Swing Voter of Staten Island–en route to solving a massive historical crime, while desperately struggling to escape from becoming another one of its victims.

Arthur Nersesian is the author of eight novels, including the smash hit The Fuck-Up (more than 100,00 copies sold), Chinese Takeout (HarperCollins), Manhattan Loverboy (Akashic), Suicide Casanova (Akashic), dogrun (MTV Books/Simon & Schuster), and Unlubricated (HarperCollins), and, most recently, The Swing Voter of Staten Island, the first volume in The Five Books of Moses series. He lives in New York City.