I happen to be spending Valentine’s Day sick in bed, which is fine, as I tend to dislike holidays. That said, I do like love letters, and chocolate, and a bit of bubbly, and jewels, and so maybe Valentine’s Day isn’t all that bad.

Here is a brief list of things I love all year round.

To Eat:
I had a party on Sunday night for the Riverhead rerelease of Other People We Married, and my homegirls at Ovenly made all the cookies and snacks. People were stuffing their pockets on their way out the door. My favorites are the chocolate truffle cookies and the insanely delicious blondies.  My mother took the above photo of my father and me at the party. Snacks not pictured but recently consumed.

To Read:
I haven’t started it yet, but P.D. James’ new book, Death Comes to Pemberly, sounds like the greatest thing ever, good enough even to make me forget the embarrassing and distasteful Pride + Prejudice + Zombies. Perish the thought.

Another must-read (especially on days when the world outside is a bit dim and dull) is Lux Lotus, my friend Lauren Cerand’s blog. I hate to use the word blog to describe it, because that makes it sounds both ugly and internet-y, when it is in fact the opposite. Lauren makes luxury seem like her due, and as a faithful reader, like it’s mine as well. I could never leave the house again and be perfectly content with her descriptions of the outside universe.

To Wear:
When I dress up, I usually start with my head. I don’t know how to do anything fancy with my hair, which is why discovering Ban.do was such a godsend. I now have three hatboxes full. Wearing their fun, froufy things always puts me in a good mood.

To Watch:
At 7am this morning, I was wide awake and in need of some beauty. As luck would have it, Netflix has The September Issue on instant watch, and so watch I did. In my next life, I would like to be Grace Coddington.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Go buy yourself some gorgeous flowers and a fancy chocolate bar.

love
Emma

Today, Riverhead Books published their edition of Other People We Married. I could not be more excited–the book still has the same gorgeous cover, designed by my handsome husband, and has some nice new blurbs from Karen Russell, Kelly Link, and Thisbe Nissen, and all the typos have been fixed. Hooray!

Lots of exciting things happened today: Elissa Schappell gave OPWM a shout-out on Vanity Fair’s Just My Type, a really good interview went up on Bomb, I made some banana bread, and I made a Facebook event page for my One and Only reading this spring. See below for photographic proof that Stephin and I have been doing work on our muse(s).

Hope to see you there!

love,
Emma

I wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal about how to be an indie bookseller’s dream. You can read it here, and thank me later. Remember when Hugh Grant had a travel bookshop and Julia Roberts fell in love with him? Me too.

love
Emma

Tomorrow night, I’m joining my fellow Sackett Street instructors and alums Ted Thompson, Jessica DuLong, and Keija Parsinnen at BookCourt. I’ve loved all my Sackett Street classes, and I’m really excited to be a part of the community. Come if you’re free! There are secret copies of the Riverhead edition of Other People We Married available, too! Come if you can.

Monday, January 30th, 2012
BookCourt
7pm

Hope to see you there!

Emma

1. Today we finally put up the Scalamandre wallpaper that I bought a year ago on Ebay. It is perfect. I’ve loved it since I was in high school and would admire it on the walls at Gino’s, an Italian restaurant that was across the street from Bloomingdale’s. Wes Anderson also used to admire it there, and he used it in the Royal Tenenbaums, and now Kate Spade has it in some of her dressing rooms, which is like so many things I love all at once, I can hardly stand it. Except that I can stand it, and I will now stand it every single day, happily.

2. Tonight I went to see Maira Kalman and Daniel Handler at WORD. They read from their new book and riffed affectionately off one another, and were completely adorable. When I said hello to Maira, and reminded her that we’d previously met at BookCourt, she said, oh yes, and then did a hand gesture that clearly meant *hair pouf*, and I died of happiness and satisfaction.

love

Emma

Yesterday, the mail lady delivered a very exciting package: my first copy of the Riverhead edition of Other People We Married, hot off the press. The book looks simply gorgeous: the cover is the same, but the book has new blurbs from Kelly Link, Thisbe Nissen, and Karen Russell, and is newly copyedited, and I couldn’t love it more if I tried. The pub date is February 7th, a month from today, and it will be available everywhere. Swoon.

Because I did so many events to support the book in New York City in 2011, I knew I only wanted to do one giant smash for the new edition. I am pleased as punch to announce that I’m doing Upstairs at the Square on March 8th, with my dear friend Stephin Merritt. The event will be free and open to the public, held at the Union Square Barnes + Noble, at 7pm. Stephin will sing some songs, I will read a bit, and then we will both be interviewed live on stage by the vivacious Katherine Lanpher. The Magnetic Fields have a new record out in March, Love at the Bottom of the Sea, and it is SO GOOD. After the event, we head off with the rest of the band for a tour of the US and Canada. (Tour blog TK)

The final piece of good news is a rather incredible feat of numbers: it turns out, that with 768 books sold at BookCourt, my book was the 3rd best bestseller of the year, after Patti Smith’s Just Kids (#1) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (#2). Number 3! I’ll take the bronze any day of the week, ladies. A pleasure doing business with you.

Here’s to 2012!

love
Emma

If you live in New York City, you have three more days to get to the Film Forum to see Otto Preminger’s ‘Laura,’ one of the best movies of all time–it’s noir, it’s hysterically funny, it’s got great costumes, and a man who writes his gossip column (on a typewriter) in the bathtub. I went this afternoon, and discovered a heretofore hidden secret truth: if you have Judith Anderson speak the word ‘adored,’ you have a perfect movie. (Note: the above image is a still from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rebecca,’ and features Anderson, on the left, as Mrs. Danvers, a wonderfully evil domestic, which is, of course, the best kind of all, as all lovers of the BBC’s Downton Abbey well know.)

Yours in black and white,
Emma

Click here to watch me interview all the 5 Under 35 Winners, and the writers who nominated them.

Note: you can tell when the cameraman tells me I’m too loud. It happens repeatedly. What can I say?

love
Emma

Most Underused Actor: Casey Affleck
Okay, so yes, technically I feel like I’m related to Casey Affleck, which I grant you is weird and kind of creepy, but I feel I can still be objective about this.  Casey endeared himself to me forever with the classic song “I had a double burger,” which is the kind of thing I sing all day long. He was the best part of Tower Heist, he got artsy with Joaquin, he’s got a funny shaped mouth and I just love him to pieces.

Best Sax Solo of All Time, Ever: My dear friend Ian Young, playing with M83
Though 2011 was the year the Big Man departed for the astral plane, it was also the year that rock n roll rediscovered the saxophone.  The highlight of that trend was M83 hiring my friend Ian to blow people’s minds. Exhibit A.

Best Book I Forgot to Put on My Best Of List: Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility
This first novel made me giggle with delight. I want sixteen more just like it. Rich kids and strivers in New York in the 30s? Doormen? Love triangles? Car wrecks? Yes please!

Best Baked Good that I Didn’t Make: City Bakery‘s Pretzel Croissant
How did no one tell me about these before 2011? It’s like everything I love, all together. If only they made a chocolate pretzel croissant. But this one will do for the foreseeable future.

Best Play: Lynn Nottage’s By The Way, Meet Vera Stark
Okay, yes, so a lot of my Top Picks have to do with the 1930s, and Hollywood, and glamorous ladies. So sue me! I was doing research. Nottage’s play, about a young African-American actress and the woman she works for, had me on the edge of my seat, and it wasn’t just because I was staring at Spike Lee and his wife, who were at the safe performance.

Best Idea We Ever Had: Houseswapping
This July, we spent a month in LA. We swam and ate guacamole and I worked my ass off. I want to do it every year, forever. If you live somewhere else and would like to spend a few weeks in Brooklyn with the two most beautiful cats in the world, holler at me. Places we like: Oregon, Maine, Texas, California, anywhere. Seriously, holler. This is where I live.

Best Restaurants: Gjelina (Los Angeles), Blue Hill at Stone Barns (Pocantico Hills, NY), the Russian Tea Room (NYC)
My husband took me to Blue Hill at Stone Barns to celebrate the sale of my novel. It was a lovely way to mark a very hectic and exciting and overwhelming period of time. Shockingly expensive, but how many times do you sell your first novel? Only once.

People I’m Going to Miss: Coach Taylor and his crew.
I know a lot of people who don’t watch television, which I suppose is their prerogative, but they’re missing out on some of the best, most heartbreaking narratives of our day. Case in point: Friday Night Lights. Do you know how much I care about football? Not at all. Not at ALL. Do you know how much I cried during the course of this series about high school football in texas? A lot. A LOT. It’s poetry, pure and simple. Ignore the second season. Everyone makes mistakes. The only thing that is mending the hole in my heart is Parenthood, also written by Jason Katims, who is clearly the best person in the world.

2012 is going to be a biggie, and I’m looking forward to it. Clear eyes, full hearts.

Happy new year.

Yours,
Emma

I am so thrilled to have an essay in the New York Times’ blog Townies. It’s all about Christmas, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and my 6th grade boyfriend, and where I’m going to be buried.

Read the piece here. Ho ho ho!

love

Emma