If you don’t know Justin Sirois by now, you certainly should. Not least because he’s a friend of the blog and a Baker Artist Award winner. We’ve already told you about his novel Falcons on the Floor and were especially interested in his serial, app centric follow-up So Say...

As anyone who’s spent about one single hour on any social media site can tell you, there are a lot of fake holidays floating around lately. One can hardly wake up in the morning without being reminded that today is National Steak and a Blowjob Day or National Talk Like A Pirate Day....

Novels used to make their first appearances in serial format all the time. Many of the greats of American literature, from Mark Twain and Henry James to Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, originally published some of their best work in serial form, usually via monthly magazines. Fast forward to...

Hi David Sedaris. Welcome to Baltimore. We hope it’s nice and sunny today and you can walk around the Inner Harbor and get a crabcake for lunch and maybe even do some antiques shopping and sneak into Jay’s on Read for a drink after the show. Oh and we hope the show goes really...

Attention: this post is for all of you internet people who claim to love books so much. It’s for all of you who wrung your hands about the discontinuation of printed encyclopedias and incessantly re-post that John Waters quote about not fucking people who don’t own books....

No lie Baltimore, we’ve been craving a snowball lately. Like bad. Like a real one, that stains your teeth and tongue and comes in a giant styrofoam cup- none of that fake-ass Rita’s junk. We’ve yet to find one either. It’s still only May. Schools have been in and...

Remember the first time you saw Ghostbusters? If you’re like us you were about 5 or 6 and you were riveted to the screen right from the opening credits. You could not wait for them to catch a ghost. And the first legitimate ghost hunt they went on in that movie was at the main branch of...

Well, you’ve got us stumped Baltimore. We’re looking around for something to do tonight. Sure it’s Fall and its turning cold and gray, and we had a big weekend last weekend, but come on, it’s Friday night, and we want to go out. So we’re looking around for...

But now I see and know what is going on tonight. We’re keeping it low-key and heading up to Atomic Books for a reading of one of our old favorites, Dance of Days by Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins. The Chop can clearly remember when the first edition was published by Soft Skull Press back...

The Chop knows that you’re all dying to hear about Halloween with Louisville Slugger and the Roommate, and all the Sunday doings and advice, but we digress a moment. Instead we want to tell you where you need to be this Friday, November 6 from 8-10 pm; namely Saint Mark’s Episcopal...

If you want to find the Chop on the town tonight, then get thee down to Falvey Hall in MICA’s Brown center at 6:30 for the launch party of Lettering and Type, the new book on typographic design by Baltimore’s own Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals. the event kicks off with a reception (Free...