The screws are tightening as the holiday season draws near, and though all I want to do is post on this blog, there is just so much to get done before I head back home for the holidays. Luckily, head Millions correspondent, Brian, has supplied me with a wealth of material over the past couple of days, from which I will borrow liberally and/or quote verbatim.
I was at the book store yesterday, and I saw that Brian had placed this book on display with a little card reading. “Has a book ever become so obsolete, so quickly,” which, along with this news story about bearded Saddam dolls, is proof that the American news-based satire business is as fast-paced as the news itself… I’ll just have to add those items to my cache of “most wanted” decks of cards (which come in original [Iraqis], retaliatory [Republicans], and counter-retaliatory [Democrats]), Enron spoofs, and hilarious um… other Enron humor. Seriously, though, there are literally hundreds of books like these: super-topical, amusing books that are rushed to market while the story is still hot in the hope that it will drag on long enough to bring in a nice profit before the books become obsolete, relics of the churning news cycle.
Brian also sent me links to a couple of interesting book-related news stories: “This link is to Harold Bloom’s review of the new Don Quixote – Bloom considers it the greatest novel ever written. Note: the review is an edited extract from Bloom’s introduction, so those that have the book… skip it — Bloom does mention that he believes [Edith] Grossman’s translation to be amongst the finest of the past 500 years.” Another story from across the pond: “An interesting article using Vernon God Little (this year’s Booker Prize winner) as the jumping off point to explain why the Booker Prize is irrelevant crap!”
