Skip to footer

Neil Gaiman, Daniel Handler team up to distribute books in New York City

The two handed out National Book Award nominees as well as their own books in advance of the NBAs ceremony.

|
L: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP R: Jeff Chiu/AP
Authors Neil Gaiman (l.) and Daniel Handler (r.) recently handed out books in New York City.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

If you were in New York City yesterday and thought you saw authors Daniel Handler and Neil Gaiman handing out books, your eyes weren’t deceiving you.

According to the website Slate, Gaiman and Handler competed on Nov. 19 to see who could give away more books in half an hour at Washington Square Park, distributing both the National Book Award nominees for this year as well as their own works. (Who won? According to Publishers Weekly, Handler said the winner was “literature.”)

Handler (also known as Lemony Snicket, the author of the “Series of Unfortunate Events” book series) hosted this year’s NBAs, while Gaiman presented the 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Ursula K. Le Guin at the ceremony.

According to PW, Handler and Gaiman still said hello to people waiting in line after the thirty minutes had elapsed and the books to distribute had vanished. 

“Your books were so important to my childhood,” one person said to Handler, according to PW. “I’m sorry,” he said. 

The National Book Awards this year went to the short story collection “Redeployment” by Phil Klay, the nonfiction “Age of Ambition” by Evan Osnos, Jacqueline Woodson’s young readers’ book “Brown Girl Dreaming,” and Louise Gluck’s poetry work “Faithful and Virtuous Night.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Neil Gaiman, Daniel Handler team up to distribute books in New York City
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/1120/Neil-Gaiman-Daniel-Handler-team-up-to-distribute-books-in-New-York-City
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe