Samuel L. Jackson Reads G*T*F*T*S
The news about this season’s most popular gift book, Go The F@@k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach (Akashic Books, published yesterday) just keeps coming. Audible is offering a downloadable audio version with Samuel L. Jackson reading (free download now available here). Brilliance will be releasing a physical audio version in mid-July (both Audible and Brilliance are owned by Amazon). Jackson is scheduled to read from the book on the Letterman Show on Thursday. You can see a clip of him reading the book for the audio here.
There have been stories about another audio version featuring Werner Herzog. It appears that recording was made for the book launch at NYPL last night (a take-off on the many Herzog impersonators who have read actual childrens’ books on YouTube, to hilariously chilling effect, such as this reading of Where’s Waldo?). It’s not clear, however, whether the Herzog version will be released as an audiobook.
The NYPL/Akashic press release describes the book as,
…a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world; profane, affectionate, and radically honest. California Book Award-winning author Adam Mansbach’s verses perfectly capture the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting our little angels to bed for the night. He begins a conversation about parenting in the process, granting us permission to admit our frustration, and laugh at its absurdity. Bright and whimsical hand-painted illustrations by Ricardo Cortés evoke the traditional bedtime story in clever contrast to Mansbach’s hilarious verses. Go the F**k to Sleep is beautiful, subversive, and pants-wettingly funny—a book for parents new, old, and expectant.
Target has said they will only carry the book only if it is shrink-wrapped (it is not currently available on their Web site), while Wal-Mart has refused to carry it at all. In New Zealand, a Christian group, Family First, has called on booksellers not to stock the book. The head of the New Zealand Booksellers Assoc. responded to the local press that Family First “needed a sense of humour.”
The book is also be available in eBook format from Open Road (available on OverDrive).