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So fashion! Wow. Such style! Very haute! Amaze.

Here at the Quirk HQ, we love the hilarious, grammatical disaster that is the "doge" meme. And by we, I mean myself, editorial assistant Blair Thornburgh, and frequent Quirk blogger Brian Morrell. True story, Brian's favorite doges in literature post is a treasured piece of writing that is referenced weekly via Gchat. 

This April, Quirk is proud to be publishing Haute Dogs by Russell van Kraayyenburg. Full of fancy and appropriately "haute" hot dog recipes, it's just a great cookbook packed with amazing recipes and beautiful food photography. And we'd like to give you a chance to win a copy, in the silliest way possible.

We'd like you to Photoshop your own Haute Doge, and send it over to us here at Quirk! Take the wonderful doge we all know and love, and make that puppy look as fashionable and hip as possible. You can email us your hilarious image (to [email protected]) or tweet it to @QuirkBooks. We'll pick our five favorites on March 10th, post them here on the blog, and send you an early copy of Haute Dogs! 

Note: You can grab the original photo over at Know Your Meme. 

Good luck! Be amaze! 

Writers everywhere were abuzz this weekend with the news that Amtrak is piloting “Amtrak residencies”—train trips provided to authors for the sole purpose of writing. Really, there’s no better place to get some quality authoring in: the scenery flying past, the white noise of the tracks, the chance to eat breakfast one place and dinner somewhere miles away…it’s like Walden Pond on wheels.

We here at Quirk are ALL ABOARD with this idea. In fact, we’d like to submit our entire company for one of these railroad residences. We want to be the first train-based publisher. We think we can, we think we can, and here's our plan!

Writers everywhere were abuzz this weekend with the news that Amtrak is piloting “Amtrak residencies”—train trips provided to authors for the sole purpose of writing. Really, there’s no better place to get some quality authoring in: the scenery flying past, the white noise of the tracks, the chance to eat breakfast one place and dinner somewhere miles away…it’s like Walden Pond on wheels.

We here at Quirk are ALL ABOARD with this idea. In fact, we’d like to submit our entire company for one of these railroad residences. We want to be the first train-based publisher. We think we can, we think we can, and here's our plan!

There’s been a blank space in my heart—and my TV schedule—ever since the majority of shows went on hiatus before Christmas. I’ve already welcomed back Supernatural, Community, Parks and Recreation, and Sherlock with open arms. 

TV downtime offers a perfect opportunity to crack open that book series you’ve been meaning to start, right? But wait! Books, unfortunately, have hiatuses, too, and we often have to wait much longer for their next installment. That being said, in the season of returning TV shows, here are four series that have us eagerly awaiting what will happen next.

Bookstores are always magical, teeming with stories and knowledge, but they can be even more wondrous depending on the location.

One of my favorite types is a “book barn,” which is exactly what it sounds like. These bookstores are housed in old barns and are pretty common in the northeastern United States (though there are some scattered across the rest of the country). Beyond the quirk of being in a barn, these bookstores also boast interesting and unique collections.

They're often a bit out of the way and tend to have a lot of cats (so be careful when you are parking)! Come along with me to the book barns that I loved visiting or want to visit soon.

We love Monty Python. To an embarrassing, quote-flinging, watch-and-rewatch-and-rewatching degree. (In fact, I’m of the opinion that we should’ve launched Flying Circus episodes into space to introduce ourselves to aliens. Silly walks and dead parrots are—no pun intended—universal).

But our beloved Chapman, Cleese, Gilliam, Idle, Jones, and Palin were no mere workaday comedians: they were Oxford and Cambridge men, and terribly well-read ones at that. So it’s no surprise that some of their best skits train their absurd and surreal brand of sketch-writing on the literary canon. Here are ten of our favorites.