I Am on Day 5 Without a Cell Phone, and I Am James Bond

My phone broke the other day. And when I say it broke I mean I broke it. I had had a piece of good news, I went out and celebrated, I drank a lot. (Pro tip: if you are not James Bond, do not order a “vesper.”) Then I took a bath. My phone took a bath too.

My phone was an LG Chocolate, a model that enjoyed a brief shining …

I’m Back and I Want to Talk About Enigmo

Hey Lev Grossman, you’re a big rock star. You spend weeks on the road, cruising from juke joints to road houses to small independent bookstores, reading your work to literally dozens of listless, distracted fans. The pressure must be intense, man. How do you keep your head together?

I’ll tell you: Enigmo.

Enigmo is an iPhone game …

Dead Screenwriters Quiz

Three important screenwriters died recently. Which writer’s work will have the greatest impact on the future of movie-making?

A) Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront)
B) John Hughes (Ferris Beuller’s Day Off)
C) Blake Snyder (Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot)

The answer, in the pattern of how these things always go, is C) Blake …

Why I’m Not Posting This Week

I’m on vacation. Sort of — I’m touring to promote my book. I thought I might be able to keep up posting while I was on the road, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. Sorry about that. I’ll be back on Monday.

p.s. just saw that there were questions in the comment thread for The Post About the Book. Answering now.

Friday Morning Non-Post: The Gentlemen Broncos Trailer

I blog this morning from Cambridge, Mass., where I am sitting in the living room of my parents’ apartment. Something about being here automatically regresses me to the emotional age of about 13. A time when there were no blogs.

As a consequence of this — and of the fact that I have to go and rock a local radio interview in about 15 …

Fun With Dopamine! Part 2

If this Slate piece is true, it’s the best explanation yet for why old media is dying—and it’s not that you dead beats don’t want to pay for it.

It turns out that our brains are wired in such a way that it’s better to look for stuff than to actually find it. Dopamine, again!

Newspapers and magazines used to provide a …

The Post About the Book

So anyway, I wrote a book called The Magicians. I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to post about it, because it seems weird to do it, and it seems weird to ignore it. But since the book is out this week, and I’m a whore for publicity, I figure I might as well do one post. What’s the worst that could happen?

I started The

Con Report: I Was a 40-year-old Worldcon Virgin

Worldcon is the World Science Fiction Convention. It happens every year. It has happened 67 times so far. This year it happened in a convention center in downtown Montreal.

It’s a big event — 4,000 people or so. Not Comic-con big, but big. The convention center itself was huge, I must have walked its length and breadth like 30 …

Worldcon: The Intellectual Property Panel. No, Wait, Seriously!

I’m just going to blog when and where I can while I’m in Montreal. Hit targets of opportunity and hit’em hard. Like back when I was in the space rangers.

I just got out of a really interesting panel on intellectual property, featuring Cory Doctorow and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, among others. First they explained how copyright law is so …

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