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This is brilliant: Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth as a poorly-played Choose Your Own Adventure by Nicole Cliffe

Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart and Eric Stoltz as Lawrence Selden in Terence Davies’ film adaptation of The House of Mirth.

Premise: You are an attractive, well-bred young woman in your late twenties; genteel, if shabby. You have poor impulse control, no real money, and a reasonably well-off aunt who generally bails you out of scrapes.

A) Insist that he preserve your reputation by taking you to a public tea-room instead.
B) Rebuff him and remain on the platform.
C) Accompany him to his apartment unchaperoned, insult the dinginess of his surroundings, and inform him that his legal salary disqualifies him as a husband.

Keep reading.

A letter to her niece, in Letters of Note. Who is Enaj Netsua?

Michael V as Lady Gaga, coming to Bubble Gang in June.

asoroleon, Evan, and turmukoy! Congratulations!

We only have two hardcover copies of Divisadero, which go to asoroleon and Evan. Turmukoy gets a trade paper edition of Pashazade, the first Arabesk book by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, a science fiction murder mystery.

Winners, please post your full names in Comments (they won’t be published). I’ll arrange delivery of your prizes to National Bookstore in Rockwell and tell you when they’re ready.

Thanks to everyone who joined this challenge. If you haven’t won a contest yet do not despair, there are more to come. Meanwhile just keep writing for no reason whatsoever, which is the best reason. My prescription: Write 1,000 words a day, read one book a week. Can’t go wrong.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by the wonderful people of National Bookstore. (Their old ad is playing in my head: The total bookstore! Where the only thing less is the price! I miss the read and white striped plastic bag. Ages ago I had a shirt with red and white vertical stripes and people said, “Mukha kang supot ng National Bookstore.”)

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Winners, thanks for the quick response. You can pick up your prizes any time starting Monday, May 10, 2010 at the Customer Service counter, National Bookstore, Power Plant Mall, Rockwell, Makati.

6 Paperback Series Worth Fetishizing, including this:

Our favorite book fetish: NYRB Classics, guarded by rubber duckies.

Sovereign Hill in Ballarat is a recreation of a gold rush town in the 1850s. Authentic-looking structures, actors in period dress, carts drawn by those bigfoot Clydesdales clomping down the street, the smell of horse manure.

No gunfights on the street, but at 4 pm some Redcoats march to the minefields, proudly announce a victory in the Crimean War—they’ve taken Sebastopol—and fire their muskets.

I love this stuff! But I am a huge fan of HBO’s Deadwood.

They even had a dress and hat shop selling retro gear. I’d already tried on every hat in Melbourne, so I went inside and looked around. There was an old and dusty bowler, size XL that nearly fit my head! Nearly. The hat situation looks hopeless. I may have to settle for one of these.

There were dozens of schoolchildren roaming the fake town on their field trip. I was in the girls’ bathroom—with modern plumbing, thankfully—when a bunch of them came in. One of them, she must’ve been around ten, pushed open a stall door then cried, “Ewww!”

“What happened?” her classmates said, crowding round her.

“There’s a tampon thing floating in the toilet!” she screamed. “I’m going to be sick.”

Then the schoolchildren lined up to look at the artifact in the toilet and go “Ewww.” Field trip!