I am smart about a lot of things, but about lots of other things? Not so much. Here are some statements I clearly remember making: “Nobody wants to see movies about comic book characters.” (c. 1988) “Nobody is going to buy books on a computer.” (c. 1994) “People like paper. Nobody wants to read on a plastic gizmo.” (c. 2003) In other words, I stand by my book recommendations, but you really don’t want me picking stocks. The one upside here is that I am willing to admit when I’m wrong. True, I have yet to see a superhero movie,...

We know: For many of our readers, only print books are the Real McCoy, and it feels rotten to say that for the moment, sales of all our print books are suspended. As with so many “nonessential” businesses, the Felony & Mayhem warehouse is temporarily shuttered, and as much as we might moan that for us, books are essential!!!...the truth is, we don’t want anybody getting sick. Just before the doors slammed shut, we made a last-minute arrangement that may allow us to send out a limited number of titles in paper; please watch this space for details. But in...

A long time ago, before I was a financial journalist specializing in Asian economics, I was an actor. And one day a casting director gave me a compliment that was among the finest I’ve ever received, though it took me some years to grasp just how fine it was. I had finished reading from the script, had stopped off the stage, and she said, “I could tell immediately that you knew what you were doing, and I could relax. I didn’t have to do any of the work.” At the time, I found this somewhat underwhelming. I wanted her to...

I met Tony Bourdain in 1995, about nine months after my bookstore opened. I pulled the galley of his first novel, Bone In the Throat, off the slush pile, and quickly realized two things: It was really, really good, and the author was a chef in New York. So the odds were that he knew other chefs in New York, and could maybe get them to donate food for a launch party, for which we could maybe get some press. I called the publicist for the book, who was dubious. Chefs? Donating food? Never been done. But Tony was on board, so...

I was supposed to spend my final semester in college working on my honors thesis, a spectacularly turgid comparison of Bertolt Brecht and Antonin Artaud. I did not do this. Most of my time was given over to a series of romantic dramas, with some actual paid acting work on the side. With about five days till deadline, I bought a fistful of illegal diet pills, strapped myself to my typewriter, and set to cranking out some sixty pages of deathless prose.   Come that deadline I was so twitchy from five days without sleep that I could barely make it...