We should have a category for good ideas that should have stayed in the brain. There are many of of them Upperbacks, for one. Non-fiction chicklit, which covers territory that should remain private: Self-loathing and personal failure were never meant to be celebrated or turned into the latest wing of the self-help industry. What is the purpose of self-help if not to celebrate personal failure? Right. What is funny in fiction is just downright sad in reality. Hey, we’ve all had those moments; we all feel like our experience gives us a right to offer meaningless advice. We don’t need

We can say, with all honesty, that our initial reaction to the title of Alicia Erian’s book was all she wanted and more. Every fiber of our progressive soul said, “You can’t call a book Towelhead. You can’t.” But of course you can. It’s not against the law, though, as Erian notes, it’s probably easier when the epithet comes from someone of Arabic descent. We’re so careful these days, it makes us wonder if such a book as The Egypt Game could be published. As she discusses her story, Erian makes it clear that she doesn’t mind making readers uncomfortable

For those of us for whom dictionaries always were, it is hard to fathom a time when they weren’t. Yet it stands to reason that even dictionaries had to be created — that it took so long is almost baffling. We will assume that the lack of electricity had something to do with this. Still, the self-described indolent Samuel Johnson managed to oversee the process, becoming famous in the process: For more than half a century the English intellectual world had been mortified by the lack of a major English dictionary. The great national dictionaries had been produced by Italy

We have a special fondness for valves (which we won’t share here), and so, upon learning of a new literary venture sporting The Valve title, we hastened over to visit. What’s it all about? Well, there’s a statement of purpose: “The Valve is a literary weblog dedicated to the proposition that the function of the little magazine can follow this form. We mean to foster debate and circulation of ideas in literary studies and contiguous academic areas.” We, of course, prefer John Holbo’s explanation because it was buried deep in his lengthy introductory post (which then goes for many more