Square Pegs

We love useless information. As should be obvious. We love the OED. As should also be obvious. When the two intersect, life is good. The March 2005 newsletter is now available (surely you knew there was an OED newsletter?), and we couldn’t help but read the article on antedatings. And what did we learn? Oh, just a little factoid about the word “paperback.” Much older than you’d imagine. 1843, give or take. Sure changes everything, doesn’t it? Interesting antedatings

Our Department of Writing, Business (everyone around here is scrambling to clear desks) alerted us to this article about authors suffering the rite of passage known as book tours. As we read through the story (verbatim accounts of human suffering and other things), it strikes us that not only must you master the synopsis and elevator pitch, but there will come a point where you are required to pull out a clever, possibly pithy, book tour anecdote. Reason number seven while we will hire someone (probably Jill as she was once a cheerleader and can spell) to pretend to be

We interrupt our steady stream of ranting and raving to, well, point you to another rant. This one comes with much inspired commentary. The Romance Heroine Next Door

We have a confession to make: we failed our first standardized test. Boredom. As with many things, it backfired on us. This, we firmly believe, is because our mother was the school librarian. Things didn’t add up, and we (the victim in this story) were discovered to not be living up to our potential. In our defense, we’ve made a career of this, despite the best efforts of trained professionals. Back then (the olden days), reading was a part of our daily school day routine. We were the kid who sussed out the mother’s notes while walking to school (this

When Mary Bly told the world that she wrote romance, one thought stuck with us: shame. We cannot think of any other genre of fiction that comes with built-in shame for its readers. The covers, of course, don’t help, but they could be plain brown wrappers, and the comments would still come. Jill Monroe posted this week about how one woman asked Jill, to her face, if her book was crap (it isn’t — we would not allow Jill to write crap; that is our sole territory, and we protect it fiercely). For some reason romance novels aren’t considered “real”

As we approach our year-end close, the various Booksquare departments are clearing desks and revisiting goals. The Department of the Obvious has realized she hasn’t presented anything to management this quarter (nor the quarter before — and we’d had a little talk about her productivity). What with raises and bonuses and the possibility of a cubicle with a view, she scrambled until she found something. From her memo: “Publishers spent a lot of money every year trying to figure out what makes people buy books. They have focus groups. Sometimes they send spies into bookstores to observe buyers as they

Never let it be said that libraries don’t keep up with the times. Or that they don’t care about their customers. The South Huntington Public Library on Long Island, New York is loaning iPod Shuffles to customers (we can only presume that the North Huntington Public Library, wracked with jealousy, will soon follow suit). If we were to attempt to latch onto Awards Season before it crawls to a conclusion (end of the season roughly coincides with the end of March Madness, but that’s more of a guideline than anything), we would nominate this idea for our Innovations in Encouraging

If you want to witness a real-live rant, give us a couple glasses of wine, ask us about Yahoogroups, then duck. Now we like Yahoo!, and use the My Yahoo! feature 24/7. We utilize the baseball Fantasy service (though we’d like more options on cap and jersey icons…our team is special). We adore the integration of RSS feeds (okay, we adore RSS feeds in general). But the mailing lists? Well, we’re not so thrilled. As we’ve long suspected, Google has finally seen the mailing list light. It was only a matter of time, especially after the launch of GMail (also

Our Separation of Truth and Fiction Department alerts us to what is potentially a case of the world gone mad (this is the world where Midol possession is punishable by suspension). We acknowledge the fine line authorities walk when it comes to identifying potential problems. Nobody wants to learn the truth via a hail of bullets. However. If this is true, Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. “Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it’s a felony in the state of Kentucky,” . . . and not

Private Ryan is not indecent. You’re, like, all, why do I care? You write. You’re trying to capture a character. Sure, that character says and acts in ways that some don’t like. You could change things, sure, but is that true to the character? We were in an airport recently, and a woman, barely, sitting next to us was on the phone. She made about fifteen phone calls. It was like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, but we got the gist: she as going home to study, but forgot her books at school. Yeah, well, we’ll leave our assessment of