Philip K Dick

"I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, &, for them, my corpus is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an integration & presentation, analysis & response & personal history." -Philip K Dick

Howard Zinn

"Don't mourn, organize" Book Friendzy! honors the words of Howard Zinn. R.I.P.

J.D. Salinger R.I.P.

J.D. Salinger has died of natural causes in his New Hampshire home. Book Friendzy! salutes him.
Here is a link to the Guardian U.K.'s article

Book Friendzy! quotes Borges

Like all the men of the Library, in my younger days I traveled; I have journeyed in quest of a book, perhaps the catalog of catalogs. Now that my eyes can hardly make out what I myself have written, I am preparing to die, a few leagues from the hexagon where I was born. When I am dead, compassionate hands will throw me over the railing; my tomb will be the unfathomable air, my body will sink for ages, and will decay and dissolve in the wind engendered by my fall, which shall be infinite. I declare that the library is endless.
----Jorge Luis Borges 1899-1986 "The Library of Babel"

Patti Smith at Barnes and Noble

Patti Smith in conversation with Katherine Lanpher, January 19, 2010. Patti talks about her time in New York City working in various bookstores, particularly Scribners and her experience with Edward Gorey. She has a new book "Just Kids" detailing her early days in NYC with Robert Mappelthorpe. Book Friendzy! keeps it raw on this video so just close your eyes and listen if the shaking camera makes you feel ill!

Book Thug Nation

Book Thug Nation is a great independent bookstore/community space in Williamsburg Brooklyn which opened in October 2009. Book Friendzy! sits down in conversation with owner/partner Troy Swain. Below are some books we touched on in our talk. Check it !

David Eggers at the Strand NYC 1/14/2010

January 14 12:00PM - 01:00PM Dave Eggers will sign copies of his latest books: Zeitoun, a non-fiction account of a Syrian-American immigrant and his extraordinary experience during Hurricane Katrina; The Wild Things, his book based loosely on Maurice Sendak's picture book, Where the Wild Things Are, and the screenplay by the same name, co-written with Spike Jones; andMcSweeney's, No. 33: The San Francisco Panorama, a Sunday-edition sized newspaper, featuring the work of Art Spiegelman, Dan Clowes and Chris Ware, among many others. At The Strand NYC

Book Friendzy quotes Kafka:

We ought to only read the kind of books that wound and stab us....We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. -Franz Kafka