At Poets & Writers, National Book Critics Circle board member Jane Ciabattari offers a 4,000-word look at where the dust has settled as newspaper book reviews have shrunk and online book sites have proliferated.
The State of Book Reviews
Laura Miller on Self-Publishing
In Salon, Laura Miller discusses the brave new world of self-publishing: “You’ve either experienced slush or you haven’t, and the difference is not trivial.”
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People were not invited–they went there.
The mansion that inspired The Great Gatsby‘s West Egg has been privately sold, after sitting on the market for two years.
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Stephen Fry’s Culture Shock
Stephen Fry uses the Alabama-Auburn Iron Bowl to summarize the state of America.
On the Crime Beat
At The Awl, a gritty interview with Daily News crime reporter Kerry Burke (who was once featured in a Bravo “reality show” Tabloid Wars that I loved but that was sadly cancelled). Burke says, “I’m not a very nice person. I’m not from a nice place. At the same time, I love these people. These are my people.”
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“I run around my house with bacon on my head and Sam Tanenhaus is sending me notes.”
Ron Charles, the WaPo’s fiction critic and the witty and winning originator of the “video book review” genre, gets profiled in Publishers Weekly.
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Airport Casualties
“I would venture to assume that all Muslim Americans felt the weight of this paradox in the years after September 11th, and never more so than when at the airport.” On the post-9/11 world, over at The Rumpus.
Racist Tintin?
Does the Adventures of Tintin film conveniently avoid the comic books’ racist undertones?
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Practical Classics (Even When You Hate Them)
Year in Reading contributor Kevin Smokler’s new essay collection, Practical Classics, explores the benefits of revisiting the first books you read (even if you hated them). In fact, the difficult and excruciating books have a particular value. “Books aren’t all supposed to be our best friends,” says Smokler in a new Rumpus interview. “Sometimes they’re supposed to be that difficult friend who encourages us to do things that we don’t feel are rational or grown-up.”
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