Callie Miller, editor staff writer of the LAist and proprietor of the litblog Counterbalance is looking for a few good minds to discuss Marisha Pessl’s novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, next week for a forthcoming roundtable discussion. Drop Callie a line if you’ve read the book and you’re interested in talking Pessl.

Independent: “The trouble is, her new book is the last thing anyone seems to want to discuss with Lionel Shriver right now. We meet within a week of the Virginia Tech shootings, and Shriver has unwillingly been thrust into the role of an expert. Four years ago, she published We Need To Talk About Kevin, a bold and shocking novel with one of the most chilling endings since Don’t Look Now. It was a very early example of what she now, guiltily, calls the ‘campus shooting’ genre. Which means that, since Virginia Tech, her phone has not stopped ringing.”

Variety: “That blogger at TMZ.com, which is owned by Warners’ own AOL, doesn’t fit the common stereotype of a lonely geek in sweats hunkered in a dark basement staring into a glowing computer screen. In fact, he was a trade reporter who was competing with his ex-colleagues at Variety for scoops. His advantage: as a blogger, he could post his items faster online.”

There are several questions that must be asked:

1. Is there anything wrong with basements?

2. Why is it that bloggers are associated with basements? Which blogger set the precedent? Have any bloggers been found dead in a basement?

3. Was the first basement-observed blogger based in Terre Haute?

4. Are they any journalists in New York now working in basements?

5. Is the preferred blogger basement a daylight basement, a walk-up basement, or a look-out basement? If we are to carry out a stereotype, I think it’s important to be specific about it.

6. Are there any known cases in which a blogger working in a basement has been bitten by a rat or a spider or a creepy crawly? Asbestos?

7. Are most of the basements owned by Warner?

8. Why would one wear sweats or pajamas in a basement?

9. Is the basement really that ideal of a spot for a desktop or laptop computer?