note-a-bear:

…I am almost done with Coming and Crying and I feel like I’ve had my heart ripped out and then delicately replaced. The mark of a small printer is all over this book, occasional typos, pages that are not perfectly smooth—some are wrinkled—and look as if there are strands of hair locked between the pages. I feel as if I’ve been reading this with someone, or having it read to me. I can see us being distracted by some of the more triumphant stories and sharing our own, I can see us recovering over some of the more forlorn moments. The point is, this book, like all books, is magic. The difference here being that this is a magic on a scale I have not reacted to in ages. There is a visceral pull to this book that I don’t think I’ve felt since I read Stone Butch Blues as a wee new-trans kid in high school. I have teared up, I have felt enraged, I have felt vindicated. More than anything, though, I have felt inspired.

The thing about personal essays is that it is incredibly hard to write them well. It is easy to make the story resonate, but it is hard to have the stories—especially within an anthology—uniformly reach into you and stir you. In the end, an essayist is writing for strangers. They are reaching out and sharing with people they never know and, in stories about sex, lust, loving, or the absence of those things, they are often literally baring something of themselves. Now, I can’t speak to how much of themselves these authors have shared, though I would suspect it is a kernel of something that not every stranger gets to enjoy. I feel incredibly privileged having read this book and I can only hope that everyone I share it with feels the same.

I brought the book to Bangkok with me and once finished, I shall leave
it in one of those backpacker book exchanges. It should blow some
minds. Great stuff. Did Gram read it?

My cousin Matt sent me this. He’s the cool cousin. And no, Gram did not read it, YET.

be-kavalier:

My copy of Coming & Crying came in the mail today, and I have been trying to get my nose out of it long enough to do the other things in my house that I am supposed to do. 

That is the way I can tell it’s a good book; when I’m avoiding responsibilities.

Thanks Melissa and Meghan!

lightningtwice asked: I'm really interested in buying a copy of coming & crying but I see it's sold out- will you be selling more soon other than in person?

You guys, you can call McNally Jackson and they will send you a copy of it anywhere in the US. They have 20ish copies as of last night. And if you don’t live in the US, maybe you could ask a friend who does to mail it to you? And if you miss those, send us an email and we’ll let you know when it’s reprinted. Spring-ish?

70books:

I came home to a package from Glass Houses Press and I proceeded to pee on myself a little bit. Not literally, of course. Metaphorical urine. The best kind. 

This is why I love the internet. The amazing and lovely people that put together Coming & Crying sent me a copy today, along with a very sweet note. Awesome. Incredible. Wondrous. I love books and humans and tumblr and all of you.

Thanks, Melissa and Meaghan. :)

note-a-bear:

I’ve read through about a quarter of the book. I’m trying to not just read it through in one sitting.

I know it’s not usually considered a bad thing, doing that, but I really have a problem just blowing through books, particularly anthologies and collections. It’s not that I don’t savor each story, each scene, it’s that I just overwhelm myself and don’t breathe.

Reading this book is sort of like eating a four-star prix fixe meal. Everything is just so damned good and you’re thinking about how good the next piece is gonna be. So you try to settle and focus and breathe with each bite into what’s in front of you and you slow down, for a bite or two. Then you hit something that just intoxicates you, maybe you find a new layer to the meal before you, so you say “I need more. I just want to try this again, I’ll linger on this piece, I swear.” You never do, you just keep going at it.

Then the next portion is before you, and the same thing happens. So, for the sake of my sanity, I’m gonna slow down. I’m gonna linger over the pieces I’ve read so far and think about what they can teach me, as a writer, as a person, as a reader. I’m gonna focus on the things that come up for me in reading memoirs of a stranger’s love(lust)-life.

aghskdfiafd- anyone who can needs to reserve the last of the copies at Mcnally Jackson, or start petitioning now for a second edition.

WHAT BETTER, INDEED.

(Flavorpill’s Hypothetical Celebrity Gift Guide/Slideshow To End All Slideshows recommends buying Coming & Crying for Sasha Grey.)

scout:

New lipstick. And new book. :) Thanks, ladies.

mcnallyjackson:

melissa:

We would just get emails from Sam at McNally Jackson every few weeks saying, “We’ve sold out. Can we have another box?”

So that’s part of how we sold 1200 books: 651 in pre-sales over 45 days (Jan 15 - Mar 1) and the rest Sept 1 - Dec 9.

We’ve got 25 copies. You know, it’s Christmas, and I’m pretty sure your great aunt Virginia could use an anthology called Coming & Crying. Just saying.

jackieisaflockofunicorns asked: How can I go about getting a copy of the book? Also is it very costly?

At this point, yes? To get a copy of the hardcover first edition you can do a few things:

1. Get to lower Manhattan. McNally Jackson has all that’s left for sale. (It’s $24 USD.)

2. Ring up our printer in Reykjavik. The price of the smallest print run they can do for us and still get the sweet deal we did on the high-grade papers we used is at least $4000, I think. It has been a long time since I opened those PDFs.

Or you could:

3. Time travel into 2011, when we have a second edition available. Ideally Meaghan and I get to do that, too, and plant ourselves in some out-of-the-way place to sit with the errata and corrected galleys, re-correct them, and get a book out to you tomorrow. But we need a little time.

(And thank you for your exuberance/patience!)