- Tayari Jones hosts a Q&A with her publicist Lauren Cerand.
- Robert Birnbaum chats with Susan Orlean.
- C. Max Magee serves up a list of forthcoming 2006 books. Surely, a nocturnal emission is to be found in there somewhere.
- Matt Cheney chats with editorial director Tina Pohlman.
- Louis Menand on Timothy Leary.
- Finnish crime novelist Mauri Sariola used a ghost writer for sixteen crime novels.
- New York Times Corrections: “A report in the What’s Online column in Business Day on Saturday, about the dismissal of two investigative reporters at Time magazine, misspelled the surname of one reporter. He is Donald Barlett, not Bartlett.” Indeed. Bartlett rose to prominence with James Steele with a series of Washington Post columns turned into books (America: What Went Wrong? being the most prominent). The last thing the Gray Lady wants is to throw the arc on their more grammatically able competitors.
- Time has listed five mystery writers worth investigating (including recent LBC nominee Jeffrey Ford). (via Gwenda)
- If the recent bookstore closings have depressed any San Franciscans reading this blog, I should note that we’re getting our first branch library in 40 years. Hurray!
- Teachers vs. Plagiarists. Film at eleven. (via Bookninja)
- Scientists are hoping to reassemble Maimonides’ works. (via Books, Words & Writing)
- Box of Books has been serving up interviews with various litbloggers.
- The Huntington Library is all set to receive the Charles Bukowski archive.
- The Los Angeles Times offers a report of the McSweeney’s “World Explained” show.
- David Thayer speculates on what the hell Updike is getting at.
Rapid Roundup
– June 20, 2006Posted in: Roundup
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (