Booksquare

Those who found themselves concerned when we published the pretty-much-founded rumor about the New York Times Book Review reaching out to mass market fiction in the future can breathe easy once again (though we will note that the Washington Post has already scrambled down the slippery genre slope). The Los Angeles Times continues to ignore popular fiction (though, in all fairness, they do appear to have regular column for mystery novels — which, as we noted, have been discovered to contain some sort of literary value). Our exhaustive research reveals little to no connection between the books reviewed by the LAT reviews and the titles on its bestseller lists. As we feel comfortable with the work we’ve done on this project, we will resume our previous routine of flipping rapidly past the LAT reviews.

• The pleasures of courtship — and the puckish joys of sending them up — figure prominently in these novels