Stephen Schenkenberg, recently returned from a blogging hiatus, has put together a site devoted to William H. Gass. It’s a useful resource for bibliographies and the like.
It’s a Gass
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Appearing Elsewhere: The Millions on Minnesota Public Radio
I'll be on Minnesota Public Radio show Midmorning tomorrow (Thursday) for a discussion of newspaper book sections and blogs. Also appearing on the show will be former LA Times Book Review editor Steve Wasserman. The segment starts at 11am Eastern and I'm told that I'll be on from 11:30 until noon.Those of you not in Minnesota can listen in online here. Hope you enjoy it.
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Amazon Starts Book Club on Blog
Amazon is teaming with Penguin Classics to do a book club that will be hosted on a new blog at the site. The club will read books from the vast Penguin Classics catalog. Two cool things about this: 1. Penguin found the host of the book club, Kathryn Gursky, from a review she wrote of The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection -- yes, she actually owns it -- and 2. she picked a fairly obscure book, Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, rather than an obvious Oprah-style pick. (via)
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Essential Interview
Mark at TEV has posted the first installment of his interview with John Banville, whose book The Sea has recently been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. This is the first of four installments that will appear weekly. Mark did a great job on this interview and I highly recommend it - it's interviews like this, thoughtful and unpretentious, that show the true promise of book blogs.
Gay Penguins Cause Trouble in North Carolina
Book bannings at elementary school libraries are so commonplace as to barely be newsworthy it seems, but I did find the furor over gay penguins in North Carolina to be amusing. The fuss is over a book called And Tango Makes Three about a pair of male penguins at a zoo in (where else) New York City, who adopt a baby penguin."My Two Dads" this is not, however, as some felt it promoted homosexuality. So much so, according to the AP story, that school officials jumped the gun and removed the book from shelves without putting it through the formal review process, which must be triggered by parents actually requesting that the book be removed. I can just imagine school officials checking their watches glumly, wondering when the parents will finally arrive with their pitchforks and torches. My favorite part of the story, though, is that the AP calls the tale of this penguin family a "controversial but true story," as if it's so outrageous (gay penguins!?) that some nefarious person must have made it up.
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