Booksquare

Now, don’t get us wrong — we support the concepts behind Simon Spotlight Entertainment. There is a dearth of books geared toward the, uh, hipper audience. Wow, we can’t even type that word without sort-of giggling. Maybe it’s because by the time there’s a book, the cool factor has frozen. That and we’re pretty sure […]

At this point in the morning (where we are just now able to type something without the operating system going “nanny nanny boo boo” at us), we assume it’s the height of wildness to be using a PC. This, we suspect, doesn’t make us an idea candidate for Susan Golomb. She likes her authors on […]

Sarah Weinman’s crime fiction review column has debuted at the Baltimore Sun. Not that we’re surprised, but her reviews are honest and succinct — just enough to intrigue, not so much that reading the book will be anti-climatic. And she’s strengthened our resolve to try the Sujata Massey series as soon as we can. Murders […]

We knew a woman who bragged that her editor didn’t edit her. No really — she thought this was a good thing; being the type to investigate on our own, we read her book. It was a bad thing. Editors may be doing less (and less) hardcore editing these days, but they do continue to […]

Dan Green (The Reading Experience — an absolute must-read, in our opinion) picks up on one of our favorite themes: artists who “disappoint” by not producing clones of previous successes. He notes that the motion picture business thrives on repeat successes, so it expected in other media. The publishing industry, alas, can’t turn around fiction […]

We imagine there are first-time authors out there who sell their books, negotiate their contracts, undergo the editing process, build websites, acquire agents, and stare at their first covers without us. But not Jill. She has helpfully included us in every moment of her first book experience. Even when she knows full well that calling […]

Due to the extreme need to test-drive Entourage for a client, the husband took a long look at our iBook this morning. It is, he declared, a wonderful piece of art (would that all art be orange), but it is insufficient for our current needs (less bulk, longer battery life, memory, speed, bigger hard drive). […]

There is an interesting phenomenon: literacy leads to increased book consumption. Probably someone with advanced degrees can draw helpful charts to explain why this is so, but we don’t need that information right now. If there is a cause that authors should strongly support (in addition to health care, etc), it is literacy. Without eager […]

Seriously, you can take the girl out of the contracts, but you can’t take the contracts out of the girl. No really — earlier this week, we were reviewing a complicated acquisition deal involving several companies (where, if you ran your finger up the org charts, you’d discover there were really only two entities involved), […]

Okay, fine, it’s mostly the allergies. Love, love, love fall in SoCal. It’s when our investment in certain brand name tissues pay off. Stephen Fry is our kind of guy: tone deaf. His failures mirror ours. His successes do not. But that’s another issue entirely. For your amusement (and that’s what makes us so giving), […]