Books/Mags/Blogs

We spent the weekend lecturing our cats (which, oddly enough, comprise the felines who live here and our neighbor’s outdoor cats) on fireworks and safety. You can probably imagine how well our wisdom was received. And with good reason…fireworks aren’t nearly as dangerous as books. Yes, your precious, coddled, beloved books are vicious and violent. And we’re not just talking about the thrillers. All books. Even those soft-covered baby books. Two stories today drove home this truth in ways our lectures cannot. Beware of books. Now we’re off to talk to the cats about the dangers arising from body slamming […]

Sometimes (okay, more often that not), we find ourselves behind on reading such things as newspapers and magazines (by this, we mean online reading, though we’re behind on those items in the physical world as well). Thus, we read critiques of articles before we read the actual articles. This may, at times, color our opinions on the original work. For example, we’d heard so much about Christina Nehring’s essay in The New York Times Book Review that we were quite certain we would roll our eyes and shake our head when we actually read the full text (if it helps,

We’re not sure what criticism of literary criticsm is called (but we are sure we haven’t had sufficient caffeine to indulge in research). Or if it’s even socially acceptable. One senses the discussion, without careful management, could degrade to the literary equivalent of a barroom brawl (Google Bill O’Reilly versus Jack Mathews for another look at this type of fight). Which, as Daniel Mendelsohn suggests, is one of the reactions Dale Peck seeks by writing deliberately provocative reviews. Mendelsohn’s analysis of Peck’s books, from the title to Peck’s own limitations as a fiction writer, confirm our long-held beliefs about this

Don’t get us wrong — we channel coversations with our literary heroes all the time. But that’s as far as we take it. We don’t presume to know what, oh, Edith Wharton was thinking and feeling. And we suspect anything we conjured would pale in comparison to reality (either that or end up too fantastic to be believed). So we find the trend of putting words into the mouths of dead authors to be a bit disturbing. Especially the part where actual quotes from the author’s work frames their actions. If we have the sequencing right, that’s a bit like

First, take a deep breath. Books are not endangered (we promise you — we can singlehandedly keep the publishing industry afloat; in fact, we think we have). And the Internet will not destroy reading. In fact, it’s likely to suck in unsuspecting non-readers (those folks who eschew the newspaper, but devour online articles like they’re french fries)…before we know it, they’ll be offering sidelong glances toward novels and wondering if there might be something of interest there. And, as we’ve mentioned, oh, once, maybe twice, there are these things called “e-books” (we suspect we haven’t been consistent with our style

In all of our excitement over just about everything, we forgot to mention that the new Janet Evanovich book was released. There we were in Target, minding our own business (actually, trying to remember where in the Target maze they hide cleaning supplies) when our eye spotted a brightly colored cover. Yes! Ten Big Ones, leaping into our hands. And Target gave us a five dollar gift card just for making our purchase (it was all very complex, but we selected the prettiest card in the bunch). For some reason, Evanovich’s latest release didn’t get a lot of coverage from

Book reviews are weird. We only have to look at the weekly review section in The Los Angeles Times to know this (yes, we are talking about the fact that they simply cannot review any of the books that appear on their bestseller lists…it’s like an allergy or something). And readers we know tend to skim reviews, looking for those bits and pieces that say “you want to read this book.” Authors, of course, obsess over everything down to the punctuation, seeking deeper meaning from the printed word. Of course, reviews being reviews, quite often, what you read is what

We were hot on the trail of the Slate story on bestseller lists last week (we felt we had something to add to the knock-down-drag-out…oh wait, we never even read it). Imagine our frustration in being unable to access the story. Especially since everyone in the world had read it. It turns out the story was pulled due to, um, editing issues and such. The Literary Saloon makes us feel better about our inability to work the Internet properly. Slate on bestseller lists