Books/Mags/Blogs

Our bookclub has supplemented* our collective reading list with something the husband likes to call the “Ayn Rand/L. Ron Hubbard List”. Ostensibly, this is a list of classic titles as chosen by readers. In reality, there was a small war between the Objectivists and the Scientologists, and the top ten slots are weighted heavily in the direction of two authors who really should have counted themselves lucky if they placed one title each. In defense of the readers’ list, it also includes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy. We mention this because, when it comes to lists of classic books, […]

Our friend Bella Stander has succumbed — yes, she’s supplementing her already busy life with a blog. It will give her something to do when she’s not doing the million other things she does. Bella will be providing commentary on “writing, publishing & a bunch of other stuff”. Given her inaugural entries. . . I come from people who marry their cousins. . . .we suspect it’s the bunch of other stuff that will provide us the most fodder for blackmail. Those who don’t engage in illegal activities will likely be more satisfied with her insider’s view of the publishing

We attended two distinctly different dinner parties this past weekend yet faced the same problem. At each party, one guest (Party A, 11-yeard old girl; Party B, 40-something man) wanted to Talk About A Book, or, rather, The Book. This was impossible — we were safely contained under a cone of silence — because, well, it’s a really long book, and, let’s be frank, people simply aren’t prepared for this type of dinner party conversation. It is hard enough to find commonality with movies and television. Just the fact that this happened warmed our black little heart and gave us

We have a friend, who, when encountering yet another ridiculous moment in life, says, “You can’t make this stuff up.” It is true that nobody would believe things that happen when some humans get together. Thus is the beauty of John Irving’s work — he comes very close to the stuff of real life. It may be dredged from his imagination, but if you think it can’t happen next door, you need to work on your eavesdropping skills. This is why we’ve been intrigued by the reviews of his newest book, Until I Find You — the one he switched

In an essay at Powell’s, our friend Martha O’Connor talks about her journey from wide-eyed innocent to stark raving mad author, with a slightly pink side trip thrown in for good measure. Her journey, like so many, truly began when she realized her first mistake: Now I’m quick to admit that my first book, which I wrote at age fifteen, was horrible. It was the most pathetic fantasy novel ever written, and could have been used as the textbook for a How Not to Write a Novel class. It was filled with pages of unnecessary description and exposition, clunky dialogue,

Last week, someone suggested that women’s fiction doesn’t get reviewed because it’s about characters (or perhaps character studies), while men’s fiction is about ideas. While we don’t want to get into a discussion on the importance of characters in fiction (we take the position that they are a key element), we also don’t want to get into an discussion about what constitutes an “idea”. We’ve had enough bad ones to know the pitfalls there. There has also been discussion about the domestic nature of women’s fiction. Again, without specific definitions, it’s hard to say for sure why this is such

Yes, the latest Harry Potter book is practically leaping out of its cardboard boxes, twitching with excitement. Yes, lots of parties tonight. Many children will be up past their bedtimes. One would think the publisher would have set a more reasonable release time for the book, knowing how cranky children can be without a full night’s rest. And by children, we’re not just talking about the under-18 set. As we will not be able to stay up that late, nor will we be inclined to watch breathless local news accounts of pre-party planning and long lines, we are filing our

The LA Indpendent has a nice profile of local blogger Kevin Roderick, proprieter of LA Observed, a site that has earned a spot in a very special “check early and often” folder in our RSS reader. About his site, Roderick says: “It really started for selfish reasons,” he explains. “I wanted to stay more connected to my colleagues and the city and keep up with what people were doing. “Every morning I wanted to read something like (the Poynter Institute’s) Romenesko, but more locally based, and there really wasn’t anything being done like that, so I thought — I’ll try

Author Chris Cleave has a problem, one that ties in to one of our earlier posts. Cleave’s novel, Incendiary, had the misfortune of being released on the day of the London bombings. In a second setback, the subject matter just happened to deal with the idea of bombings in London. The publisher reacted appropriately: All advertising was pulled by the publisher Chatto & Windus, a division of Random House. (The novel is scheduled to be released next month in Canada by Random House.) The ads showed the book’s British cover depicting smoke billowing up from a burning London skyline. Print

For further proof that getting an entire species to behave in accordance with a single set of rules, we point to a recent mistake by a grocery store in Canada (names, except Canada’s and one judge who’s due for her fifteen minutes are excluded to protect the innocent). Yes, it appears that someone accidentally shelved the new Harry Potter and, gasp!, someone accidentally bought it. You’d think with all this modern technology and the ability to send a man to the moon and whatnot, there’d be a way to stop customers from buying books. Oh wait, there is: the legal