The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (signed first edition, dated on Pulitzer day)

Here's a serious catch: a signed, first edition / first printng of Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer, dated April 18, 2016, the day he won the Pulitzer for fiction.

I can't imagine anyone saw this coming -- I for one hadn't even heard of The Sympathizer until the award was announced. Whenever this sort of thing happens, whether it's the Pulitzer or the Booker longlist or shortlist or winner, there's this strange moment online where traces of suddenly-collectible books appear to be available only to suddenly be out-of-stock upon adding a book one's abebooks cart. It's a weird kind of race, and then this sort of thing happens:

While seeing that Symapthizers were disappearing off the internet by the minute, I went to Viet Thanh Nguyen's website and saw that he was doing a signing that night at the Harvard Bookstore. They recently sold me a signed Marilynne Robinson book from a previous event, and while there's not a good way to check editions on a phone order I took a gamble and bought the last hardcover they had in stock. They were gracious enough to get it signed for me and ship it to New York, and lucky for me, a first printing with a complete number line:

Currently reading:

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

Currently listening to:

Cold Cave, "Love Comes Close"