Books/Mags/Blogs

Next week, BS is hosting the monthly meeting of The Bookclub. This is where women and men get together to drink wine (the post-Christmas gathering is prime timing due to holiday gifts) and eat food. Having mastered macaroni and cheese, we are moving on to a new recipe this year. Should be very exciting. Hmm, seems like something else is happening. Ah, yes, we are supposed to talk about the book (never fear, we have done our reading). This month, we’re thinking of scaring our friends by inviting Orson Scott Card to call and join the conversation. He wrote the […]

We read Nick Chiles’s opinion piece on the changing face of black fiction with mixed feelings. First, we wanted to take him aside and promise that everything would be all right. Then we realized that popular fiction will never meet his standards; everything would not be all right. For those of you who don’t explore beyond your favorite section of the bookstore, you should know that many major chains now have a section called (give or take) “African American Literature”. The reason you should know this is that these misguided bookstores are thinking that the target audiences are better served

Far be it for us to offer tips on how to do one’s job, but, well, we have to go there. We can’t sit back and watch folly. As you’re surely aware, now is the time of year for all manner of lists. A lot of “Best Of” stuff is happening, and a lot of earth-shattering approaches. Our friend Jim, for instance, put an old release (or two) on his round-up of last year’s best music. This after making fun of someone for putting an old record on her list last year. We will not name names (oops, we did),

Just as the Whitbread conglomerate pulls out of the annual Whitbread awards — apparently they don’t fit the current business model — announcements are made regarding this year’s winners. The British do love their book awards, and they love to draw out the process. You have your long lists, your short lists, your winners, and then your uber-winners. Ali Smith, winner of the Best Novel title, is now up against a slate of other bests to see who gets the big money. Also honor and bragging rights. This leads us to wonder, as is our nature, about the pronunciation of

As it turns out, the secret to Agatha Christie’s success was not compelling mystery nor enduring characters. This is good news for you — what made Christie’s work unputdownable* was her hypnotic writing style. Yes, the mother was hypnotized all those years. Somehow this puts a pall on our small childhood victories: did we argue persuasively or was she in Christie’s thrall? According to a study, Christie uses literary techniques mirroring those employed by hypnotherapists and psychologists, which have a mesmeric effect on readers. It could mean the structure of her novels creates physiochemical responses which cause people to seek

It is rare that we point out the failures of the BS mother, but sometimes we must. Yes, we realize this incursion will lead to a longish catalogue detailing each and every transgression we committed under her roof — we are prepared to take our punishment. The mother missed a golden opportunity during our seventh year: to make us the youngest-ever published author. She has, in her secret stash*, a delightfully long, involved story — the first-ever book attempted by our young imagination. That a three-page assignment ended up around 21 pages or so should have been the first clue

We’ve long been a fan of Bud Parr of Chekov’s Mistress, so are very excited to see he’s launched a new venture — MetaxuCafe. Using a mix of cool technology (finally a Litblog featuring a folksonomy!) and cool content, Metaxu will, well, we’ll let Bud say it: MetaxuCafé is devoted to highlighting the best content from the community of bloggers who write about books. We serve both the writers and readers and intend to drive traffic to member’s sites and create context around and give permanence to their original writing. This is definitely a site to check and check again.