Square Pegs

Who is the audience of a book review? Or, rather, what is the purpose of a book review? We contend that a review is for the reader, not the writer. Open any newspaper, read any magazine, hit any website that reviews books, and they all serve a single purpose: to provide an opinion of the book for the purposes of aiding the reader in making a choice about whether or not to purchase the book. So, naturally, we were fascinated by this comment at The Reading Experience: Reviewers should feel they have an obligation to literature. Very interesting. The next […]

Around here, we have long discussed the eBay economy and its implications. Most people sell a little and feel fine. Some people run entire businesses online, via eBay. And others, well, not so much businesses as they’re making a good amount of money. It wasn’t going to fly under the government’s radar forever. Perhaps we should have titled this post “Remember Al Capone.” IRS may label eBay sales as tax revenue

How do you answer a question like this: “Love isn’t a reason [for writing books],” he explains patiently. “Art needs a function.” (I wonder briefly whether what I do qualifies as art). “So what’s yours? What’s your agenda? And what am I meant to take away from one of your books?” Well, why do you read books? Why do you pick up one book over the other? We’ve argued that fiction allows us to visit uncomfortable places while remaining safely in reality. You can poke and prod at things outside your comfort zone without making a commitment to them. After

There is something delightfully…mean…about Tanya Gold’s skewering of Elizabeth Gaskell’s skewing of Charlotte Brontë’s life. Mrs. Gaskell, you have an enemy. An enemy who describes your crowning achievment as …biography is the ultimate piece of feminine passive-aggression, a mediocre writer’s attempt to reduce the brilliant Miss Brontë to poor, pitiful Miss Brontë. Gaskell wrote the Life as a tragedy, not a triumph. Ah, yes, well, it wouldn’t be Victorian if it were happy. England was undergoing penance after the excesses of the Georgian era and romantic intellectualism of the Regency period. No more! cried the monarchy. No good can come

We would submit that there’s nothing more intriguing on Earth than a marriage. Especially a marriage where the participants “tell each other everything” — a recipe for secrecy and deceit if we ever saw one. Though both Webster’s and OED fail us miserably on this regard, we remain convinced that families, by definition, contain more twists and turns than any spy novel. If your family is not like this, we are sorry. Also we have spare siblings if you want to jumpstart the process. Exploring familial intrigue is the stuff of great writing. The Corrections did this fairly well, even

In order to recharge our batteries (our yoga teacher is truly trying to kill us, but we will not be defeated…handstand is going down. Hmm, unfortunately, that last attempt at bravado is a bit more true than we’d like to admit.), we are taking a few moments off from ranting. But never fear, dear readers, that we will neglect you. To keep you occupied while we recharge (yes, as you suspect, it involves food, caffeine, and napping — not necessarily in that order), we point you to a perfectly lovely rant on a topic near and dear to our heart.

We feel a bit voyeuristic this morning. Our neighbor, The Happy Booker, has been behaving rather suspiciously, what with all her primping and cleaning. The latter we attributed to the equinox, but when we saw the unmistakable golden glow of candles and heard the sultry jazz, we couldn’t resist pressing our nose to her window. We saw him! A gentleman caller. Right her in our neighborhood. After running his plates, we discovered he is Alan Cheuse, NPR reviewer and, well, in his own words: “Hello, my name’s Alan…and I haven’t read fiction since eight thirty this morning.” My reading habits

Though it it probably surprises nobody, we are the type to get involved with our community. We have regular contact with our elected representatives (they, we’re sure, would express the joy of hearing from us if they could). And we have an extreme passion for libraries. As mentioned about, oh, a million times, the Salinas library system is in peril. The community is rallying as they come to understand the situation. But Salinas, if we may be frank, is a community of people we don’t want to acknowledge. The average income of the city’s residents is well below poverty level.

Further to yesterday post pointing to a discussion at BookAngst 101, we bring you a comment aimed at artists for another industry: At a panel discussion by A&R (artists and repertory) executives, speakers described a business that wagers huge amounts on promoting blockbuster hits, with little interest in slower-building, long-term careers. Because probably Rod Stewart will be recording well into his second century. Talent Meets Commerce in Austin The Balancing Act

We are quite excited tonight — we have taken the first step toward our redesign: upgrading to WordPress 1.5. Now we can tackle the spam problem with even more vicious impunity. We will be spending the rest of the evening studying the WordPress manual to learn cool new tricks.