Some pre-Thanksgiving gratitude! A huge shout-out to the many friends and book-loving strangers who have come to my readings during my cross-country(ish) book tour. The most recent event, hosted at Skylight Books by the amazing Cecil Castellucci, was such fun that the LA Times even wrote about it. (A slow news weekend? Maybe. OK, fine.)
Lucky for you, I have two more reading events in 2017. Tomorrow, Friday, Nov 17th, I'll be reading at the NYU Reading Series; on Saturday, Nov 18th, I'll be at the Philly Homebrew Reading Series in Philadelphia.
All this traveling has made me nostalgic for places where I used to live. So I wrote an essay for LitHub about moving to Topanga Canyon and chasing a ghost through my backyard. Spoiler-alert: it's more funny than spooky. And I don't die at the end.
The other thing I've been doing often while traveling is writing on my phone. This has led me to rediscover the magic of auto-correct. Many of the substitutions and suggestions are ducking inspired.
One day, out of curiosity, I started typing in famous sentences from novels I love. The results were pretty entertaining, especially when jet-lagged. So I typed faster and more inaccurately and got this...
A totally irrelevant aside about food
When it comes to nutrition, I am a delighted, negligent mess. For ages, I've ordered the unhealthiest thing on the menu, insisting that it really doesn't matter because the science of nutrition is amateurish and unproven. This isn't entirely true, but it's fun to make smug pronouncements while dipping French fries in mayonnaise and stuffing my face with a meatball parm while a healthy friend nibbles on salad and rage.
Truly, I've come to rely on the latest contradictions in the nutritional world to bolster my lifestyle. I love when, every couple years, a new claim arises, overturning all the previous ones, and now we can eat butter/fat/eggs/meat/grain/insert villified tasty food here.
And so it's with particular glee that I came across this recent Big Think article. Turns out that maybe gluten isn't the cause of stomach problems but, like some lame second sequel villain (ahem, Mandarin), the real bad guy is... fructan?
What's in a name?
Before I go, a quick request. I'd like to come up with a name for my newsletter. As catchy as “Panio's Newsletter” is, it could use a little something. So if anyone has any preferences or ideas, please email them my way. Current contenders are:
Panio's Not-Quite-Monthly Newsletter
Freaks and Greeks
The GIF That Won't Stop Giving
Nothing Rhymes With Panio
Paniohmygod Just Stop Already
Thanks for reading, and have a great November!
Yours,
Panio
P.S. If you'd like to share this newsletter with a friend—or an enemy—forward them this email and they can sign up here.
Goodbye