Maxine Clarke: “I concluded that Vox must be going for the ‘young’ market — free (unlike Typepad), easy to use, high-level modules that don’t allow much personal variation on a basic theme, and don’t let the blogger remotely near the html code (total contrast with Blogger’s ‘let it all hang out’ approach). This impression is to some extent confirmed by the latest upgrades: you can now customise your banner design, and, with a complete straight face, Vox provides a question of the day for those inconvenient occasions when ‘you don’t know what to blog about’.”
Author / Edward Champion
Did Desai Win the Booker Too Young?
Daily Times: “Winning one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards put her in a pantheon of celebrated novelists, but Indian Booker prize-winner Kiran Desai worries she may not have another book in her….And for now, as she travels between literary festivals, she says has nothing left to tell.”
Reports of Mr. Sarvas’ Glamour Have Been Grossly Underreported
Adam Kirsch: “In the last decade, however, Los Angeles has fortified this reservoir of talent with a new sense of literary community, and a growing literary infrastructure. The two go hand in hand. If New York remains the literary capital of America, it is because writers here feel that they are a central part of what the city means and does. And they can feel that way because of the publishing houses and magazines and readings and parties that make literary life visible and even, at moments, glamorous.”
My Uncle is Thomas Pynchon, But I’m Waiting Until He’s Accused of Plagiarism Before I Go Public
BBC: “An adopted brick-layer who traced back his family history discovered his brother is the internationally celebrated author Ian McEwan.”