Booksquare

It is a fact that most of our history, as noted in textbooks, is men’s history. We know about the wars, the politics, the conquering of nations — we do not know so much about how people, regular people, survived. That, after all, is the story of women, and our history books cannot be bothered […]

We can’t recall: is Halloween the one with the practical jokes? And if so, what makes a joke practical? While we puzzle over this problem, the husband thought our readers would jump all over his latest find. Yeah, we know, he doesn’t actually read Booksquare. That’s never stopped him from assuming he knows what happens […]

Hard as it is to imagine, we are finding it difficult to get behind this Fall’s time change. Normally, we embrace gaining an hour, but the whole thing started off bad and seems to be getting worse. Hopefully, caffeine will change our luck. In the meantime, we give you activities designed to pull you away […]

We once confessed to a friend that, in moments of difficulty, that we sit down and write essays. Not about what we did last summer, but about whatever we need to work through. It is amazing how the act of writing can clear the mind, make the untenable feel, well, tenable. We certainly don’t have […]

It stands to reason that more than a few authors and publishers support Google’s book scanning initiative. We once took a statistics class and there was a technical term for people like this. It will likely come to us next week after our attention has moved on. Wired tracks down several authors and gets a […]

Today, we were given the day off. Well, really, it was the afternoon off. Or, as we clearly recall, it was the afternoon off after we drove 50 miles. Snowstorms and molasses may have been involved, we can’t recall. All we know is that email never stops coming, cool stories are written every minute, and […]

We begin this post with a question: is it really a quiet move when it was announced in advance? We ask because, despite various announcements over the past year about publishers selling books directly to consumers, the news somehow bypassed the media. It’s like they’ve found fresh meat. Since the online bookselling idea is old […]

M.J. Rose takes a look at recent statistics from AdWeek and sees the future: Today’s AdAge.com reports that in 2005 U.S. workers will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs. Well, one man’s waste is the publishing industry’s opportunity. If people are reading blogs, publishers and authors need to figure out effective ways of […]

According to our official biography, we have a great fondness for the underdog, the man on the street, the little engine who could. We are so into the triumph of the spirit, it overwhelms our existence. Except when it brings us down, and we are down. Thomas Shess is in Week Sixteen (like Week Fourteen, […]

Warren Buffet is, apparently, the world’s richest person. Richer than the Queen of England. His personal story is one of triumph and heartbreak*. Buffett devotees sit at his feet and absorb wisdom the way most of us down French fries**. The world is salivating for a chance to read the Buffett story — just let […]