Download a FREE And The Heart Says Whatever audio chapter

Maybe you, Emily Magazine reader, are still on the fence about whether to actually purchase And The Heart Says Whatever (which is a paperback original that retails for $16, $10.88 plus shipping on Amazon, 20% off at Word this week if your name also happens to be Emily, as is all their stock, but only for Emilies!)  Anyway, maybe you don’t have the kind of discretionary income that allows you to just fling $20 bills around.  I feel you.  So to help you make up your mind,  I recorded an audio chapter of the book that is available for free downloading or streaming at www.andtheheartsayswhatever.com.   Andrew Gauthier, who is 1/3 of the Cooking the Books production crew along with me and Val,  made it sound very professional because he’s a professional sound person — he added bits of ambient noise and interstitial music.  The result is sort of like a particular radio show I will not name for fear that they will sue us for biting their signature style.  That’s Life In America for you!   Anyway,  go and listen,  and also watch the episode of Cooking the Books where Bennett interviewed me about the book (and his role in it, and whether the animals in it also have fake names).

5 comments to Download a FREE And The Heart Says Whatever audio chapter

  • Justin R. Morris

    First time visitor to your site. So I took your advice and listened to the chapter you have available. I liked the words “stiffened almost imperceptibly.” Yet I kept waiting for that crucial-vital-attention-grabbing-moment; the self-deprecating moment, the moment when you’d become aware of the fact that “this is a memoir and these are important thoughts that everyone should be aware of even if you don’t know me because I am super interesting and my life makes for good literature” is an assumption that everyone seems to live by. The moment when you’d give a sarcastic grin peppered with disillusionment (make that heaping tablespoons of disillusionment) to this assumption. The moment when you’d let the reader know that you are very aware of this sort of thing. You know, the moment when you’d lift yourself above the text and beyond what it means to be a memoir. I waited and waited. The moment never came.

    Of course, I am an unpublished nobody and you are published somebody. Maybe I should stop waiting for these moments. Seems like a meta-view of the text should be a necessity these days. However, IF this moment comes later in the book I will very-seriously consider buying it. I hope I don’t come off as sounding too asshole-y or anything. I mean, your book is bound to alienate someone, somehow. I think it may or may not have alienated me as a reader. And I’m just giving my honest “gut reaction” to what you have provided here. With that said, I wish the best for you and your book.

  • kt

    Dear Emily,

    This is your grad school internet friend who purchased your very reasonably priced book for pre-order a few weeks ago when I got my tax return. I just got the book in the mail today, and I just very unreasonably read your book cover to cover in the span of three hours. I am supposed to be grading papers and writing a short story, and instead I sat in my bed for three and a half straight hours and read your book. It’s lovely. I couldn’t put it down. I posted an Amazon review. (And if you’re serious about those cookies you promised, I wouldn’t say no, though I must disclose that my boyfriend got a job at WalMart a few weeks ago, so we aren’t as bad off as we were previously. I feel I must disclose this, as a grad student getting free cookies from a writer seems analagous to a homeless person giving all their money to charity.)

  • emily

    @kt, email me your address and specify chocolate chip or lemon butter.

  • @Justin Personally, I think it is better if that moment does not come, precisely because it is so overplayed in this kind of writing. One of the things that set the author slightly apart from the competition (at least on her blogs) is that she goes there, to that point of disillusioned sarcasm, but not quite.
    By the way, I think some of Emily’s best stuff is on that blog about, er, food?, she used to write at one point. ‘I do not want to eat those kittens.’ lol.

  • emily

    Hey guys, nothing personal but just a note to let you know that I am closing the comments for a bit, as part of a general battening down of the hatches initiative. If you happen to read the book and enjoy it — I hear this is possible! — please feel free to tell people IRL or via your preferred Internet method of doing that.