Both Carrie and Callie share their thoughts on Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Callie will be conducting a roundtable next week to discuss the novel.
The jury is now deliberating over the Cussler/Sahara lawsuit. Is Cussler boasting about the number of books he sold or did Crusader Entertainment breach their contract?
The Book Marketing Society is trying to find the book that best defines the 20th century. The BMS, of course, does this purely out of the goodness of their collective heart. They have absolutely no interest in publicizing overpraised books. Which is why such century-defining books as Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch and Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary are the list. I know that when I ponder a book that best represents the escalation of technology, the horrors of Hitler and Stalin, McCarthyism, mass production, the influence of Freud and feminism, and too many 20th century ideologies and innovations here to list, a trivial memoir about soccer and a novel about a frumpy thirtysomething who can’t find Mr. Right are the first books that come to mind.
Thomas Jones examines an interesting looking book about how the typewriter’s relationship to the gender divide.
So this is the new way. When promoting literacy, boast about how fast your program is instead of the ability of people to understand it. You may as well describe how fast you ate your breakfast, instead of how tasty it was.
Over at the LBC, nominee Marshall Klimasewiski has begun guest-blogging and, in his inaugural post, he observes, “My impression is that there are better answer to that every year, and anyone who thinks blogging is mostly about bitching and tearing things down hasn’t been visiting sites like this. (Not that there’s anything wrong with a little eloquent bitching, of course.)”
Former Chicago Sun-Times Book Editor Henry Kisor has kind words: “If, as time goes on, book sections should give way to literary blogs, I don’t think that is going to be such a bad thing. Discerning readers will always gravitate to the best-written blogs and the amateurish sites will wither on the vine.”
I intended to link to it yesterday, but this week at the Litblog Co-Op, folks are discussing Marshall Klimasewiski’s The Cottagers. There’s talk of horrible vacations and, on Friday, a podcast interview will follow.
Charles Shields reveals how he used the Internet to conduct research for his Harper Lee biography.
George Eliot’s letters to Henry Lewes have gone online. You can access the letters here. My only question: why didn’t they do this in the middle of March?
Kathleen Parker: “People who read books are different from other people. They’re smarter for one thing. They’re more sensual for another. They like to hold, touch and smell what they read.” What Parker didn’t tell you is that some “people who read books” can also be found in criminal databases and some of the more unsullied readers are prone to displays of snobbery. I’ve known some pretty smart and sensual people who don’t read in my time and have even managed to get more than a few of them attracted to books. Largely because I was able to assure many of them that I was a schmuck. The key to getting people to read is to be humble and to listen very carefully to people. Then you can figure out what kind of books they’re likely to go crazy over. (via Bookslut)
Niall Griffiths revisits Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and finds that there’s more inside the book than during his initial read. I’d like to see more newspapers do this. Litblogs are often accused of rushing out their posts (and I would agree with this to some degree), but many print critics are equally celeritous in banging out their reviews to meet deadlines. Because of these conditions, I have to ask whether a book like Pynchon’s Against the Day really received a fair reception, or, for that matter, whether most books are fairly assessed in today’s environment. Mr. Asher has more to say about the socioeconomics of book reviewing.
I got the tip from Maxine, but it appears that Lindsay Anderson’s if… is getting the Criterion treatment. Now if they can somehow get Anderson’s other masterpiece O Lucky Man! onto DVD, we’ll all be very lucky.
Mother Jones: “By the end of the century, half of all species on Earth may be extinct. Who will survive the world’s dwindling biodiversity, and why?” (via Isak)