Has the book gone post-modern already?

Everywhere I look, someone’s stamping an image on a page of a book they’ve pulled apart and calling it art (didn’t that used to be called blasphemy?!). The other day I saw a dress made entirely out of pages from old books. And yesterday I heard that my employer, a newspaper, is throwing a party in what used to be a Borders bookstore.

The other day, in line at the check-out stand at Safeway, Annabelle hugged me and said, “You smell like your work.”

“You mean like a lime-scented candle?” I asked — that’s what I’ve been burning lately.

“No,” she said. “You smell like newspaper.”

That made me wonder what a blog smells like.

And all of this makes me think of my favorite book so far this year, Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart.

I mentioned this to my dear friend Cindy, who actually runs a bookstore, and she sent me the trailer to Shteyngart’s book. Like the book, it would be hilarious — if it didn’t ring so true.