Litblogs Unite

Last night, caught in some sort of TV doldrums, Mrs. Millions and I ended up watching "The National Scrabble Championships" on ESPN2. Two pasty guys hunched over a table doesn't typically qualify as a sport, but we figured we'd allow ESPN2 this digression from its usual content. Or maybe since the poker shows have been such a hit, they're trying to introduce more "seated around a table" activities to their lineup. Regardless, since we're known to whip out the Scrabble board, we watched. It was mildly entertaining. One of the commentators was Stefan Fatsis, sportswriter for the Wall Street Journal and author of Word Freak, a look into the odd world of competitive Scrabble. A couple of years ago I gave the book to Mrs. Millions, and let her know that I'd like to read it when she was done. She ripped through it, and started talking about "bingos" and "combos" and other strange things. She read the book so intently that the it literally fell apart - torn binding, pages scattered everywhere - totally unreadable. So, I've never read the book. And she's beaten me at Scrabble ever since.

I got the latest catalog from Soho Press in the mail recently. Soho is an independent press in New York that puts out a few books of literary fiction a year. They've also got a crime imprint. A flip through the catalog drives home Soho Crime's reputation for detective stories set in exotic locales. This time around there's New York's Chinatown, Bethlehem, and Paris, as well as paperback editions for recently released hardcovers set in Seoul, Florence, Granada, and Paris again.Also on the way is a mystery set during World War II called Billy Boyle by James R. Benn. Billy Boyle is a Boston cop who gets unexpectedly thrown into the war and ends up investigating the death of an official of the Norwegian government in exile. It's the first in a three book series about Boyle. The catalog also has word of the paperback edition of The White Earth, Andrew McGahern's multigenerational tale set in Australia that I read and discussed in January.If you are a publisher and would like to send me your catalog, please email me.

Norman Mailer made an unorthodox appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, beamed in via video link from his home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He's apparently not big on technology, however, calling the video-interview system more suited to a "young chimpanzee." The Herald's story on the event includes a number of other classic Mailer quips, including his noting that the many punches he's thrown in his lifetime were "always well considered."