Feast your eyes on the best birthday present ever: a 6×8 Wacom Graphire drawing tablet. Meg got it to replace my dinky 4×5 that I’ve been using for ages. This baby sits nice and heavy-duty on my lap, it’s got programmable buttons…oh, am I excited to get back to work on the book!

• New Shalom Auslander and Etgar Keret columns.
• Silverblatt discussing Beckett on Bookworm: reading Beckett’s prose opens you up to the comedy in the plays.
• Dan Bejar (Destroyer) talks. Meghan refuses to look at pictures of him because she wants to keep her image of him singing in a Transylvanian castle.