Peggy Orenstein, author of Girls and Sex, writes at Mother Jones about “hotness,” commodification, and women’s bodies.
Barbie Bodies
Some Links
Google put up a special Shakespeare page for easy access to all of his plays through Google Book Search. The Book Search blog has additional details.Latest literary trend story: senators writing books. “About 30 of the 100 currently serving U.S. senators have authored books at some point in their careers, and the number is growing.”A literary trend story continues: Product placement in novels. Earlier instances include efforts from Ford and BMW.In the Guardian, “An American judge intervening in a long-simmering feud has ruled that the rights to John Steinbeck’s most famous novels… should be seized from his publisher and handed to his descendants.”And finally, there’s Ed’s Twenty-One More Reasons Why Litbloggers Are Evil & Unethical
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Je Ne Sais Quois
Chances are you’ve heard that the most important thing a writer needs to make it in the modern lit world is luck. Undoubtedly, there’s a lot of truth to that, but what if there’s another factor that has a bigger impact on a writer’s success? Sean McElwee argues for the importance of something more prosaic.
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Google Enters the eBookstore Ring
Google took the wraps off its long-awaited ebookstore today. Google ebooks can be bought at Google Books and are also available at Powells and indie bookstore portal IndieBound (both of which are missing out on some serious publicity by not having info about this on their front page today). The ebooks are readable on a variety of platforms, but not on the Kindle (at least not without some tweaking).
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Dear Matthew Specktor
Thanks to Stephen Elliot‘s Letters in the Mail project, LARB senior editor Matthew Specktor finds himself admiring the gorgeous handwriting of strangers, feeling tickled and gobsmacked, and reflecting on letter writing as something “beautifully useless to do.”
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