Here is friend of the Toast and literary person Rachel Fershleiser holding an early copy of Texts From Jane Eyre, the book that I have written with these two hands. Ignore the John Grisham poster in the background; John Grisham is a distraction. John Grisham, like all men, is the past. I and my kind are the future. We will ascend on the backs of male humorists and scryers and wordsmiths and culture critics into some kind of super-heaven, like Coin Heaven in Super Mario.
Should you care to pre-order it (the book comes out in November), you may do so here. Should you care to briefly look at the description and decide the book is not for you, you may also do that. “I do not need another bathroom book making jokes about telephones,” you may decide, and that decision is right for you. “I can read Buzzfeed lists for that.” (This is also an appropriate place to discuss how terrific Rachel’s outfit is, and how well it goes with the cover of my book.)
There are a great many books in the world, and I cannot be expected to write a book that satisfies one and all. I am merely one woman with hair as beautiful and as red as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman’s, and I wish you joy on your chosen path.
In my seventh grade yearbook, Mark Iverson once wrote:
I’m smarter than you
I’m a better speller than you
I can read faster than you
Mark, those were lies and you knew them to be lies in your heart when you wrote them. Clearly you cannot read faster than me, or else you would have written this book first. You also made fun of my Nickelodeon-brand shoes that had the little puddles of Gak on the toe because they were “boy shoes.” They were not boy shoes. You’re boy shoes.
I have held onto my grudge for these thirteen years and I will never forgive you for it. Consider this my rebuttal. Your move, sir.
Tags: books, texts from, they were great shoes and you’re a jerk, you know who else wrote a book
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Hold on a second, how could Jane Eyre be texting anyone? Is this book not historically accurate? I don’t know about this, Mallory.
MARK IS THAT YOU
I CAN STILL READ FASTER THAN YOU MALLORY.
Congratulations, Mallory! Your success is no surprise. I am very happy for you. Did Rachel specifically dress to match the book?
Rachel dressed for a meeting and I, her helpmeet, requested she get herself photographed today. She has done so twice, in grand fashion.
*preordered*
I will spend the next seven months in glorious witchlike solitude contemplating the future majesty that will be mine through reading this book.
Congrats!! I too hold a grudge against a boy from my adolescence for once asking if I was a lesbian because “you wear a lot of blazers and Ellen Degeneres wears a lot of blazers.”
What adolescent boy knows what a blazer is, I think I learned that in college maybe
What’s a blazer?
that book! those tights! Also Mark Iverson sucks.
“Should you care to briefly look at the description and decide the book is not for you, you may also do that. “I do not need another bathroom book making jokes about telephones,” you may decide, and that decision is right for you.”
That decision is right for no one.
Yay!
Also I would like Rachel’s dress post haste.
*runs to Google Mark Iverson*
he co-created Dorm Life, which did not really go anywhere, which pleases me
He has bad hair.
Revenge is a dish best served covered in failure hollandaise.
FAILURE HOLLANDAISE…so rich, so creamy, so easy to choke on.
My Iverson taunt just died in my throat. I liked Dorm Life a lot. Never mind. IT WAS PROBABLY THE ACTORS THAT SAVED IT. With a non-Iverson creator, perhaps we’d all be sipping cold beverages at a Dorm Life movie by now
Damn Iverson for depriving me of a Dorm Life four-movie saga.
Every new fall quarter at UCLA meant another batch of freshmen irritating me with their constant raving about Dorm Life.
“Hey, I just watched this amazing show, have you heard of Dor–”
“YES YES I HAVE NOW GO DO 1ST YEAR THINGS LIKE BUYING YOUR TEXTBOOKS OR SOMETHING.”
BOO MARK
I was thinking about him Googling himself and finding this unexpectedly…
John Grisham is forever. He tipped me $10 on a to-go order once when I was working at a sushi restaurant in Charlottesville and earned my undying loyalty.
According to that author bio, our own dearly beloved The-Toast is described as a “cult-favorite” website. Are we a cult? Is that what we are? Mallory, I thought you were going to tell us if we were a cult.
I thought the ceremonial robes made it obvious.
I was told those were for comfort and style, not cult membership. If I’d have known they were special, I would’ve tried harder not to spill hot sauce on mine.
The t-shirts and hoodies are nice, but ceremonial robes are really what the Toast store needs.
HOP TO IT, PAVICH
(I’m assuming Nick is the one in charge of such things.)
If we’re a cult I think I’m pretty okay with that.
Well, it *is* my year of trying new things and having new experiences so cult? Yeah, okay.
BEST CULT EVAR
The best cult around. Let’s get t-shirts.
The Cult of Misandrist Revolution, for sure.
I’d like a cult hat, please!
it could be like a pointy witch hat but with a pocket
[GET IT? GET IT?? POCKET WITCH]
I mean… more like “coven,” but potayto-potahto, y’know?
Scene from the last SF Toast-Up:
We’re the best kind of cult.
I like to think of us as simply a group of women just sort of sitting in a semi-circle.
Only *sort of* a semi-circle, though. We’re working up to a full-on semi-circle. Maybe after we’ve been a cult for a few years.
YAAAAAAAAY I belong to something! *Zoidberg claws*
On Amazon page:
Mallory Ortberg (Author) <— Hooray!!!!!
Mark Iverson, you have made a powerful enemy.
EnemiES. Just wait ’til all our varied hexes and charms rain down from various parts of the world.
It’s beautifully beautiful – congratulations!
yeah girl! no one is more deserving of ascension to Coin Heaven.
SUCK IT IVERSON.
Also….I kind of need to know where dear friend Rachel got her glasses, or alternatively how I can steal them off her face.
Seriously, those are my Platonic ideal of glasses. I need them.
Congratulations and huzzah!
I will own this and put it somewhere prominent in my house and loan it to friends and lose it and need to purchase more copies.
I have never pre-ordered anything in my life, but I am pre-ordering this.
“Mallory Ortberg, the co-creator of the cult-favorite website The Toast,”
GUYS WE’RE A CULT
WE’RE A FAVORITE
WE’RE ALL THESE THINGS AND MORE
Goddess bless Amazon Prime and 1-Click ordering. Such instant gratification will slightly mitigate the sadness I feel at having to wait until November to have the actual book in my hands.
Those are some pretty boss yellow tights!
Future Me is going to be so pumped/surprised after I forget I ordered this and it pops up on his Kindle in November.
Suck it, Mark!
Love,
The Cult of The Toast
But seriously. Awesome. Pre-ordered.
“So anyway, here’s a thing I wrote.”
(CONGRATULATIONS! SO GREAT!)
I read through this thinking “thisisn’tthejokedon’tletthisbethejoke” even though you’d previously mentioned the book was in the works; such is my mental state on April Fool’s Day.
I’m so torn because I want to pre-order it right. now. but I don’t know where I’ll be living in November!! D:
But also aahhhhh congratulations Mallory!! We are going to make you so rich!!!!
Have it shipped to a trusted friend? Alternately, have it shipped to a less-trusted friend but have Amazon disguise it as something far less glorious, so that it does not mysteriously disappear?
CULT FAVORITE
yeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Hey guys maybe if we keep talking about Mark Iverson in the comments, this article will move up in Google rankings until anytime you search for him The Toast comes up telling him he’s boy shoes. THE ULTIMATE REVENGE.
also, book!!!!
Welp, this page is currently the 11th url if you google “Mark Iverson Dorm Life.”
LET’S KEEP THIS GOING, TOASTIES
IT’S NOT UNSETTLING AT ALL
Congratulations! Iverson was even then threatened by your genius. Too bad The Cult has a long memory. A very long memory.
Obviously I am very very excited for this book. But also, GAK!
THIS IS GREAT NEWS
also MARK IVERSON because @LaughableWalrus is onto something here i think
I shall buy this through Amazon Smile, which donates a teeny amount of the proceeds to Provide, an organization that supports abortion access through medical trainings. Take THAT, The Patriarchy.
Thanks to this comment, I directed my tiny slice of proceeds to Provide as well. *skateboards by the Patriarchy, flipping the double birds*
Oh thank you! I have pre-purchased a second copy for my daughter through Amazon Smile and Provide.
According to the pre-order confirmation email, my copy will arrive the week before my birthday!
but now I really want to play Super Mario Bros. 2 until the book magically replaces the controller in my hands
I look forward to having a book published before my ex-boyfriend does. You know the one. Yeah, that guy. And then I’ll have a copy anonymously sent to his home, with a big HA inscribed on the title page.
Congratulations!!!!
I’ve never heard of Mark Iverson but your one of me favourite people so suck it, Mark.
Not long ago I couldn’t sleep and realized the reason was I was trying to remember how the whale noises were spelled in ‘Texts From Moby Dick’. I knew The Toast had bitten me, but it was then that I realized I had seroconverted. Congratulations on the book and on being a cult leader as well, and yes, that outfit is to die for.
*Ahem* To quote, “HROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOARRRRRRGGGGGHHHOOOOOORROOOOOHHH”. Still one of my favorite things I’ve read on this site.
I knew you’d have my back, ’cause that’s just how cult members do it.
MALLORY YOU WITCH GODDESS HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT NOV 4 IS MY BIRTHDAY?!?!
Preorded like a mofo. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEEEEEEE!
Congratulations!!! Can’t wait to read it! 🙂
I bet my bottom dollar that Mark Iverson secretly liked and admired you, and would have been happy to worshipfully velcro up your Gak shoes every morning. But he knew in his little withered bean of a heart that you would rightly scorn him, so he masked his adoration in this copper-plated facsimile of animosity.
(Seriously, if you don’t like someone, all your write in their notebook is ‘Have a good summer’. To go out of your way to write something like that means you are all up in his brain-space. What Mark Iverson shows here is that he was watching your progress in spelling and reading intently and using it as a yardstick against which to measure his own paltry efforts.)
(Ugh. Boys.)
(Honestly.)
“This item has not been released yet and is not eligible to be reviewed.” – Amazon
I beg to differ, Amazon. I could tell you right this very moment what I think of this book.”And lo, Mallory moved upon the face of the formless internets. She spake unto her cult, and we saw that it was good.” Five Stars.
What a beautiful time to be alive. Thank you for this momentous gift to the world.
Congratulations, Mallory! Being a total philistine that has never read Jane Eyre will, I expect, slightly dampen my appreciation of your brilliance, but only slightly.
Oh well, I have all summer to correct that deficiency.
Mark Iverson, Mommy Dearest, The Runaway Bunny’s mom=all the same person!! Congratulations!
Ordered.
Thing I will do post-haste: Use my powers as library staff to get this on order for the good people of southern England. We will have new members of the cult before long, friends.
I knew you'd have my back, 'cause that's just how cult members do it.
GUYS Mallory is a filthy liar and/or unable to accurately see (more than a year?) into the future. But I’m glad for that now, because all my dreams were dashed back when I saw this tweet.
https://twitter.com/mallelis/status/2767236895616…
Pre-ordered!
The “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section is classic Toastie stuff: Jolie’s book, My Life in Middlemarch, Veronica Mars book, Hyperbole and a Half, etc. Made me smile in solidarity with my cult sisters.
\”Noice!\” – Key and Peele
Just pre-ordered mine! It was a good reminder that I also need to get Jolie’s book one of these days, preferably before moving into my own home.
Um, this gets released the day before my birthday. This is obviously going to be all I ask for this year.