Number of days it lasted: 18
Cities visited: 11
Events: 13
Xanax consumed: .25 mg. (That was the very first date, in LA. I’m done with Xanax. I’m dissociated from reality enough as it is. Maybe I should hold a giveaway for the rest of the bottle. Except that that’s probably a crime.)
Caffeine consumed: lots
Alcohol consumed: next question
Books read:
The Long Song, by Andrea Levy
*Zero History, by William Gibson
*Medium Raw, by Anthony Bourdain
*Swords and Dark Magic, ed. Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan (Read three quarters of it, then left it on the plane to Seattle. DAMMIT.)
*Solar, by Ian McEwan
*The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell
*Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart
Lake Overturn, by Vestal McIntyre
Mathilda Savitch, by Victor Lodato
The Invisible Mountain, by Carolina de Robertis
The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paolo Giordano
(This list is pretty un-genre. That’s because three of them were for a novel contest I’m judging, and a couple more were for a book group I met with at the great Rakestraw Books in Danville, CA. And then there’s work. I starred the books I read on my own or would have read on my own.)
Movies watched: Reign of Fire. Eh.
TV watched: Two episodes of The Venture Brothers, “The Lepidopterists” and “Dr. Quymn Medicine Woman.” I’m not in a big TV phase right now.
Official Tour Theme Song: “Love My Way,” Psychedelic Furs. Or maybe “My Mathematical Mind,” Spoon. Or “Do You Swear to Tell the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth So Help Your Black Ass” by Amanda Palmer. They kind of switched off days.
Official Tour Breakfast: French toast. Every day. (Best example of same: Pinecrest Diner in San Francisco.)
Rock star moment: It was in San Francisco at Writers with Drinks. This was the only group reading I did, and the only one in a bar. The bar was called The Make-Out Room. I was the last of six readers, so I was seriously nervous. Tobias Wolff had read earlier, and I was coming right after slam poet Taylor Mali, who had crushed. I was on my third pint. I got up on stage and said “How many goddamn, motherfucking, wand-licking Harry Potter fans in the bar right now? This one’s for you.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! It seemed to work at the time.
Also awesome: In Portland there was a guy wearing a Brakebills t-shirt. And not just a regular old Brakebills t-shirt, a really beautiful one. Thanks man. And your friend who made that for you? I know a lot of people who’d like to talk to him.
Things lost in hotel rooms and on airplanes: headphones, book, razors (2), swimsuit, sleep, dignity
Position of The Magicians on next week’s New York Times bestseller list: #12!!!!!
Weight gained: eyeballing it, I’m gonna say 8 pounds
Message to everybody who came: THANK YOU.
Champagne consumed: one glass of Moët on the last night in Minneapolis. Cheers.
Tags: cheers, I am not a number I am a free man, it's really good to be home, tour
I will confine my remarks to the cultural products making reference to math. “The Solitude of Prime Numbers” sounds terrible; was it? But “My Mathematical Mind” sounds good; is it?
I’m in the middle of The Magicians right now, and absolutely loving it. I can’t wait to go to lunch just so I can read some more, and I have to tear myself away reluctantly when it’s time to go back to work. It’s been a long while since I’ve enjoyed reading something this much. Thank you!
@JSE not nearly as terrible as it sounds. in fact I rather liked it. FWIW Giordano is a physics guy. Also he’s Italian, young, good-looking and now a zillionaire — it sold a million copies in Italy. if we band together we can destroy him.
Brakebills T-shirts! I want one.
@Elizabeth Thank you!
Elizabeth, I know what you mean. I finished The Magicians on the clock with the book on my lap hidden beneath my cubicle desk.
JSE, not that you asked my opinion or have any reason to care about it, but that song and entire album are an absolute masterpiece of rock music.
oh I meant to say about the song. there isn’t much math in it, but it is ridiculously good. edgy rhythms, sort of zeppy guitars. it’s a shame the lyrics are kind of crap, but he’s pretty unintelligible on that one anyway.
I am also part way through the book…I wrote you an email, and I will pay big bucks for a Brakebills t-shirt. By the way, I did wonder if Hagrid would show up at The Cottage.
Hi Lev, sorry I’m late on this one, but I hadn’t checked the blog in a while (I know, I’m a bad fan). So I’m from Philadelphia, and last month I was on the west coast for 7 whole days. This is a big deal, because I’m pretty poor and not huge on the whole traveling thing. I was in Portland from June 9-13, and San Francisco from June 13-16. Now, if you look closely at those dates, you might notice that at the time you were giving your talk in Portland, I was in San Francisco, and at the time you were giving your talk in San Francisco, I was in Portland. We even went to some of the same places. I had lunch at the Pinecrest Diner in San Francisco. I wandered around Powell’s for a few hours. The universe seems to be playing tricks on me. It is just not fair.
I don’t mean to sound like a silly fanboy, because really I’m not. I just find it especially funny that of the extremely small list of authors that I would even consider going to a signing, you were there! In the same city that I was in! It was just on a close, but oh so very different date. Sigh.
Anyway, on your next book tour, could you please try to come to Philadelphia? It would make this whole ‘chasing Lev Grossman around the country’ thing I seem to be doing a lot easier.
We are playthings of the gods.
re: Philadelphia, I’ll try! They don’t let me choose.