2/18/2007

Reading Cougar, A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men, by Valerie Gibson. She's working on a book proposal about a similar topic and is seeing what Gibson has to say.

While we were talking it occurred to me that I've heard her voice before--she was reading at Adobe bookstore at the Instant City reading a few weeks ago and is actually a local celebrity.

The Instant City theme was "the love issue." When editor Gravity Goldberg introduced her she talked about how she and coeditor Eric Zassenhaus had had qualms about whether this would be a soft/sappy issue, but, upon opening the first submission, which was Blowdryer's piece, realized they had nothing to worry about. (Jennifer Blowdryer was wearing the most amazing mustard colored dress at the reading, which, I think, has already started a revival of the color....)

Check out Jenniferblowdryer.com. She's the author of Good Advice for Young Trendy People of All ages and White Trash Debutante. She'll be reading at Dog Eared Books on Valencia on March 2nd with Camille Roy.

Her favorite authors are Jake Arnott, a British author who writes crime fiction; Jon Ronson, another British author who is an investigative journalist; and Gary Indiana, an American who does literary journalism--fictionalized nonfiction.


The sunshine was fabulous and she was hanging out in front of Ritual waiting for her friend Dixie, who had gotten caught up talking to friends at Muddy's at 24th. She'd just gotten a new dog, which makes you popular with everyone.....

Dixie finally arrived with Jules. Something good she read recently--The Contortionist's Handbook, by Craig Clevenger. She said you get sucked into the characters--every time the main character has a drug overdose, he becomes a new person. When you first start reading the book, she said, you don't really know what's going on, but then you begin to see what's happening--when he becomes a new person, the old relationships have to end.

Jennifer loaned her Ambition, by Julie Burchill. It was a bestseller in the 1980s. There's a review about it on this forgotten classics blog.