Book Reviewing as Blood Sport
The Pioneer Detectives: Now on iTunes!
Good news folks. The Pioneer Detectives, our new ebook original, is now available on iTunes.
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Clarissa Explains It All
Recommended Reading: This piece by Adelle Waldman at The New Yorker on loving and loathing Samuel Richardson, “the man who made the modern novel.”
Good Ol’ Fashioned Library Feud
Due to some outcry, Robert Darnton comes to the defense of the New York Public Library’s proposed expansion and revamping.
Goodies from The New Yorker
In this week’s New Yorker, James Wood critiques Paul Auster, while his sometime-subject Don DeLillo offers refreshingly offbeat short fiction.
Great American Label
“Almost as soon as the concept of the Great American Novel was invented, in the nation-building years after the Civil War, Buell finds it being mocked, noting that one observer dryly put it into the same category as ‘other great American things such as the great American sewing-machine, the great American public school, and the great American sleeping-car.’ It was enough of a cliché by 1880 for Henry James to refer to it with the acronym ‘GAN,’ which Buell employs throughout his book.” On the reigning gold standard for quality in American fiction. (Related: we asked nine experts their picks for the best American novel.)
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When is a Blog Not a Blog?
The New York Review of Books gets into the blog game with…well, it’s not a blog, exactly, but then I guess neither are we these days. With The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post also clamoring for the attention of bookish web-surfers, there’s more book-focused content online than ever. So why do I find most of it gives me a headache?
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