Books/Mags/Blogs

While we’ve been fighting the Mad Beast of Sinus (new Tylenol product: Severe, written in friendly, easy-to-read-through-the-agony yellow letters), others have been thinking. Normally, we don’t encourage this sort of behavior, but that’s only because we know what sort of trouble ensues. When you throw something out into the collective unconscious, you may eventually be required to do something about it. Mark Sarvas tempts fate by offering his top ten things he would do to resuscitate the Los Angeles Times Book Review. While we’d focus more on important things like dress code and making sure the coffee is always fresh […]

Was it just a last week that we were talking about the magic that can happen when local authors get together with grocery stores? Larry Baker (Athens, Anerica) read our mind — amazingly, he pulled a thought from the brain’s recesses long before we acknowledged its existence (the thought, not the brain). Baker proved that tender loving care and an intense relationship with broccoli can do wonders for a book. Now here’s what bothers us: Barnes & Noble. To quote Baker: But I didn’t anticipate the resistance of Barnes and Noble. The local B&N managers, good people, loved the book

Hey, blogs are good. Blogs are fun. Blogs are cheap to read. Some blogs even have pictures. Where do you think we’ll be in three years? Is the conversation shifting more rapidly than anyone thought? Will all the newspaper coverage of litblogs lead to online publications moving into the forefront of book news? Will this be the perfect convergence of analog and digital? Or, as we suspect, do we need a serious injection of caffeine into our system? [M.J.] Rose urges readers to view literary blogs like newspaper columns. “Readers can find their own little Oprahs,” she says. Find a

Let us, for a moment, take a look at a sequence of events to see if what we learned in our writing class tonight had merit (huh, conflict, plot, timeline?): Tod Goldberg declares the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books to be a major holiday. He then notes that the tri-tip sandwich will be the official food of said holiday. The Elegant Variation successfully stalks Steve Wasserman at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Steve Wasserman resigns his post as head mucky-muck of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Tod Goldberg declares he’s the head of the table and

Learning that we were a) supposed to notice blurbs, then b) read them, before c) taking them seriously came as a shock and surprise. We thought they were like those jokes that only some people get. As it turns out, they are secret codes designed to communicate with the enem…er, reader. Blurbs are especially helpful for readers, especially considering that most of them rely upon plot synopses to assist in the decision-making process. Strange as it may seem, readers rank knowing what the story’s about above learning that the book is long-overdue. That somebody forgot to the book to the

Did you know that Saturday, May 7, is Free Comic Book Day? We suppose this is only slightly more surprising than discovering this year’s event isn’t the first. Apparently there’s a need to build awareness of the genre. For some reason, we don’t find this reassuring. If there’s one thing it seems that everyone should know about, it’s comic books. Now if you can’t make it out for your free copy, never fear: business is booming. What with graphic novels and manga and the Fantastic Four about to hit the big screen*, comics will continue to be the big story

As part of our romantic evening, the husband regaled us with exciting sentences from the latest Adam Penenberg column. You know, as a prelude to a rousing discussion on the state of journalism today. Or rather the state of newspapers, which is something that interests us greatly. It’s not that news isn’t relevant, but when we get up in the morning and scan the Los Angeles Times “A” section, it’s filled with yesterday’s news. Literally. The news we read yesterday. Old stuff. This morning, there’s a whole bunch of new news. Because of the process of printing, newspapers will necessarily

One of the hazards of shyness is a fear of approaching strangers and asking questions. It’s the stuttering, the red face, the inability to form coherent sentences (though they always sound good in one’s mind). Sometimes, however, desire thwarts shyness, and we (the terminally shy) walk right up and ask for what we want*. Sometimes that’s all you have to do in the book world as well. Well, ask and then build a campaign, but why quibble over details? In an innovative effort to raise the visibility of literature in translation, two nonprofit literary presses and a small indie house

Today we had a long lunch with frequent commenter and author Karen Palmer, and the subject of upperbacks (yes, stealing Publisher’s Lunch terminology) popped into the conversation. We were thinking specifically about hardbacks and less expensive alternatives. It didn’t surprise us that we were in agreement on one point: hardback prices are off-putting to readers considering taking a chance on new-to-them authors. We also thought that ten dollars was a comfortable price point — it’s a little more than a movie, but you spend more time with a book (and, from the Booksquare perspective, with a book, you have a

The Happy Booker is entertaining again, and this time she’s using the good china. What else can a girl do when she learns that one her literary loves has discovered a new blog and is telling the world? Well, yes, corraling him for an interview does seem like a logical next step, and she’s done just that with Richard McCann. Though we haven’t read McCann, this alone is enough to make us shower, blow dry, brush teeth, find matching shoes, find clothes, and stand outside Vroman’s until it opens: And then there is this: Although I’m by nature a slow