Clouds? In Your Coffee?

A couple of people have mentioned it on their blogs already, but Jonathan Lethem has revamped his website, including a couple different homepages. I'm currently digging the hypnotic animation of the nighttime drive down an isolated highway, but the Japanese movie monster poster's pretty stylin' as well. Poke around inside and you'll find some previously uncollected essays, including meta-meditations on what might have been if Otis Redding hadn't died, weird tales concerning Drew Barrymore, and his recent Bennington College commencement speech.

Tasha Alexander is another writer I know--a college classmate, actually--who just launched a website to promote her debut novel, And Only to Deceive. It'll inevitably get called a Victorian Da Vinci Code, although from the excerpts I've seen, it looks a bit more like a Victorian Rule of Four with a dash of Elizabeth Peters, and I can't wait to see how it turns out--especially since I really can say I knew her when.

And here's another addition to the list of fake people with real websites promoting real books: conjoined twin pop singers Sparks Sisters, the central figures in Tara McCarthy's Love Will Tear Us Apart. The ruse is so elaborate that there's even downloadable MP3s with Flora and Fauna's "hit" songs "Twice as Fun" and "I'm Beside Myself." I can't wait to hear their version of the tune that gives the book its title ("This is a song by a classic New Wave band Joy Divisions! (sic) They were a great party band and we love this song!"). Because I collect those sorts of trainwrecks; I even have Tony Randall and Jack Klugman singing "You're So Vain," in which Felix determines that "Yes, this song is about me, isn't it?"