John sent me the following e-mail: Lists are dumb, but you’ll probably have an opinion about this one. Entertainment Weekly’s The New Classics: Books To which I replied: Yeah, I saw this and thought about blogging it. We actually get a free subscription to Entertainment Weekly because of some concert tickets we bought like three …
My friend John e-mailed me this link about ‘misery lit,’ a.k.a. ‘grief porn.’ While I’ve certainly been aware of it, mainly via supermarket and Target book sections that inevitably include copies of A Child Called ‘It’ and it’s sequels, this is the first I’ve seen about a specific genre or special bookstore section. Does Borders …
I woke up at 2:34 AM (yes, I looked at the clock). Someone was shouting. What was it? A party? I couldn’t tell at first. I gradually recognized the cadence of some kind of cheer, a la ‘Hip hip hooray,’ or some other inane B.S. Then I heard British accents. (Maybe their football team had …
This morning, I bounced over to Metacritic — an aggregator of film, music, game, TV, and book reviews — to take a look at their composite review of James Frey’s new book Bright Shiny Morning. Except what I found was this message: *Note: Metacritic’s regular coverage of Books has concluded with the final Harry Potter …
Continuing on the subject of housing, check out this article from the Atlantic.
Apparently Philip Roth thinks the idea of life after death is delusional. The exact quote is, “I have no taste for delusion,” in response to Terry’s question about his thoughts on the possibility of life after death. Is it just me, or is it seriously disheartening to hear one of our great writers sound off …
I don’t know how to describe this project. It’s more than a comic strip. It’s surreal and absurd. I love it. When I write about the trouble our culture is in, I’m generally referring to traditional forms: print media, compact discs, film. Things like this are part of something new, part of an internet culture …
Here’s a fun(ny) piece on young writers and writing workshops from Slate.com. I’ve thought periodically about the value of writing workshops, and I keep coming to the conclusion that the workshops try to simplify what should be a difficult process. Writing good books should be hard. Getting published should be hard. Workshops, to me, seem …
I can’t believe I missed this: “The Uncommon Reader” [by Alan Bennett] posits the theory that the right book at the right time can ignite a lifelong habit. (For the fictional queen, it’s Nancy Mitford’s “Pursuit of Love.”) This is a romantic ideal that persists among many a bibliophile. -A Good Mystery: Why We Read …
The Book Review must have had slim pickings this year for their ten best list. I wasn’t thrilled by last year’s list either, but at least they put The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford and The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan on it. This year, they missed Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, …
