As part of its tenth anniversary celebration, Housing Works Used Bookstore Café held a silent auction last night with dozens of signed first editions (including, in the interests of full disclosure, a copy of The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane!). Former NBCC president John Freeman and other bidders mingled with authors like Lynne Tillman, David Rees, and Nathaniel Rich, while Housing Works volunteers like Susie Lupert, Rachel Fersheleiser, and Chaya Thanhauser kept things running smoothly over the course of the ninety-minute auction. (Several of the books are still available, by the way, so drop by the store if you're interested—remember, all the proceeds go towards the store's mission of providing services for people with AIDS.)

Winner of the Sandor Marai prize in Hungary, Gyorgy Dragoman's The White King was originally plucked out of the slush pile by the Paris Review interns which published a chapter from it last fall which is why last night The Paris Review, Houghton Mifflin and The Gernert Company toasted Gyorgy Dragoman and the publication of his novel. Dragoman, who was invited by Salman Rushdie to participate in the PEN World Voices Festival has had his novel translated into 25 languages so far. The Tennessean calls it "stunning, a debut novel as assured as The Catcher In The Rye," and this Sunday we'll see what the Washington Post Book World has to say about this great coming of age novel.

Attending the event last night were Gregory Dragoman pictured above(left) with his Houghton publicity team: Director, Lori Glazer and Associate, Emer Flounders. George Plimpton made a brief appearance but his Paris Review staff stayed to enjoy the wine and cheese.
Also in the house were Sharon Male and Allison Takeda from Parade Magazine (left).

Pheasants take flight, interns make good, white wine runs out and more pictures after the jump.

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Trish Ryan sent us some photos from her reading at the Harvard Coop Bookstore last week, where more than 100 people came in to hear her read from He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, a memoir about "faith, hope, and happily ever after." One of Ryan's friends turned her book cover into a cake frosting and, after she entertained the crowd with stories like the one about the time a guy came out to her in the middle of the first date—"there was some power in my attempts to use feng shui to attract a man," she quips, "the only problem was quality control"—she brought out her "happily ever after": her husband, Steve.

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Last week I happened to catch the very tail end of Pacific Standard's monthly reading series (# 13 in the Observer's Brooklyn Literary 100) hosted by The Millions blogger Garth Risk Hallberg (A Field Guide to the North American Family) featuring Ceridwen Dovey (Blood Kin), Anne Landsman (The Rowing Lesson)[pictured here], and Francisco Goldman (The Art of Political Murder). Turns out Slunch was there and did a full review of the eveninghere.

What's awesome about this reading series, aside from the authors they get, is that after they read they have to throw a dart to determine the next drink special. This I can get into. So, a bar has a reading series. So what? Well, let me tell you: aside from the over 16 taps of pacific coast micro brew, they're big supporters of the written word. Guess that's what you get when the co-owner is a poet. They run a Finnegans Wake Reading Group every Wednesday (They should get Jameson to sponsor it), there's also Chin Music: The Pacific Standard Poetry Reading Series. The bi weekly series is curated by Colin Cheney and May 8 features Jeffrey McDaniel (The Endarkenment), Meghan O'Rourke (Halflife), And Carey Mchugh (Original Instructions For The Perfect Preservation Of Birds &Co.)

I also really enjoyed how casual things were after the reading, and having a chance to chat with Anne Landsman, Garth, and Stephen Pierson, publisher of the beautifully designed Canteen literary magazine.

By the way, Pacific Standard just rescued a cat, so if yours has gone missing, or you'd like to adopt, drop them a line.

Amy Tan was flitting from one end of her SoHo loft to the other and back again Friday night, taking pictures of the guests at her party for fellow authors Rabih Alameddine and Aleksandar Hemon, both of whom were in town for the PEN World Voices festival. Although it was touch and go as to whether Hemon was going to make it—as Alameddine chatted with guests in the living room, a Riverhead publicist related, in excruciating detail, how Hemon and his family had been stuck at the airport in Chicago for an extra eight hours and had only just now landed at LaGuardia. Fortunately, they were able to get downtown just in time for the scheduled end of the party, which showed no signs of stopping...

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I didn't know what to expect when I signed up to attend the PEN Cabaret at Webster Hall last night. I used to go to this venue to see bands like Eurasure, Eurythmics and The Human League back in the late 80's when it was called The Ritz and nothing ever started on time. Plus, this is NYC, and the only thing that ever starts on time here are the shows on Broadway. Well, we can now add PEN to the punctual list.

Upon arriving 20 minutes late, I missed the opening act which was was supposed to be the British Dandy Sebastian Horsley, who was recently denied entry to the United States on grounds of 'moral turpitude.' I know there was some worry over at PEN that he might not make it back in the country for this event but it seems that homeland security unwadded their panties for him.

[UPDATE: "Sebastian did not get in to America to perform for the PEN cabaret," emails his publisher, Carrie Kania. "We still can't believe it."] Well, this certainly is a good lesson in punctuality for me.

Bosnian fear of brain inflammation and Rick Moody on Moo Cow after the jump

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Red Hook's Freebird Books is throwing a party Sunday afternoon in honor of Thomas Pynchon's upcoming 71st birthday, but the announcements the store's co-owner, Peter Miller, has been sending out are already making waves. One writer who received the invitation feting "that lovable recluse and buck-toothed prophet of paranoia" wrote Miller to complain that "it is insulting to characterize Mr. Pynchon by his teeth," then found fault with the menu, which consists of "foodstuffs famously vomited by Gravity's Rainbow's Tyrone Slothrop: burgers, homefries, chef's salad with French dressing, Moxie, after-dinner mints, Clark bars, salted peanuts, and 'the cherry from some Radcliffe girl's old-fashioned.'"

"There are many wonderful foods in Pynchon's work, starting with bananas and good coffee. perhaps," this unnamed writer chastises. "Mason & Dixon... is loaded with some interesting foods...What Slothrop vomits is a (light) comic riff on bad food in our fast-food overprocessed world. Honor Pynchon's life-embracing love of the right kind of food, if one is having a party for him, I say."

"I will say, in full disclosure, that I surely do not have the sense of humor Mr. Pynchon does," the letter winds down, "so perhaps I am too earnest and am making mountains out of what Pynchon would not." Perhaps. Anyway, if Miller isn't hauled into jail for postering party fliers around the neighborhood—and he reports that he's already gotten one warning—the party's set to begin at 3 p.m.

Last night's soiree for James Patterson and his latest novel Sundays at Tiffany's was the first book celebration at Tiffany & Co. since the publication of Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote in 1968.
Hosted by Mike Kowalski, Tiffany and Co's Chairman and CEO, there was a mix of media and fashion folks noshing on pigs in blankets (couchon en douvet?) and drinking the vino including Tiffany's creative director John Loring, New York Post's gossip gal Liz Smith, agent Bob Barnett, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver, Hachette Book Group CEO David Young, Little, Brown Publisher Michael Pietsch, President of Random House films Peter Gethers, and Publishers Weekly's Sara Nelson. The highbrow event even made the NYC Social Diary

Tiffany's created two window displays at their 5th ave store featuring the book along with their Celebration Ring which is mentioned in Paterson's return to the romance novel. In his speech, Patterson mentioned that one of his most well-received books was a love story (Suzanne's Diaries for Nicholas) and that many fans named their children Nicholas after reading it.
I wonder how many people out there are named Alex Cross? I know of at least one cat...

Note to self: title next book after famous and very expensive store.

The PEN literary gala, a fancy fundraising dinner held under the whale in the Natural History Museum, is sort of like publishing's prom. Editors who are there to pad out the tables their respective houses have purchased, borrow something black-tie and try to pretend that they're at ease hobnobbing alongside Tina Brown and the kind of heavily bejeweled, taut-faced ladies who attend this type of benefit a couple times a week. For an hour before the dinner, people mill around the T. Rex in the lobby politely refusing passed hors d'ouvres, drinking free drinks, and whispering 'Omigod is that Toni Morrison' to their friends (It was!).

Morrison was being honored with the PEN/Borders Literary Service Award. The night's other honorees included U.S. Veterans Administration nurse Laura Berg, who was investigated for sedition because she criticized the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina, Chinese writer Yang Tongyan (pen name Yang Tianshui-- pictured), and Kho Tararith and the Nou Hach Literary Project of Cambodia. They got the First Amendment award, the Freedom to Write award and the Freedom to Publish award, respectively. One magazine editor I talked to had tried to bone up on Yang Tongyan's work before the ceremony, but had been unable to find anything online that wasn't in Chinese. "I bet there are less than 10 people in this room who've read his work," he mused. Well, yeah.

I wasn't about to be a jerk and ask any of the famous people there what their favorite Yang Tongyan poem was. Those famous people included: Gary Shteyngart, Gay Talese, Frank McCourt, David Remnick, Michael Gross, and Dave Zinczenko. Oh and yes, Tina Brown -- in a black dress, looking super hot.

The after-party for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, held on a large plaza behind UCLA's Royce Hall, attracted a significant cluster of southern California's literati, as well as the writers and publishers who were in town for the Festival of Books.

I can't remember exactly what novelist Tod Goldberg could have said to provoke such a reaction from memoirist Bridget Kinsella, but it probably wouldn't be quotable here even if I could. (On his own blog, though, all bets are off.)

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