A family emergency brought us to the City of Brotherly Love for an unexpected and extended stay. Since returning we've hit a summer slump. With buckets of emails, calls and work waiting for our return, we've opted instead to avoid the desk and enjoy the break in weather—a brisk 90 degrees! We suggest you do the same. If you do have to stay at the screen, here are some good links to keep you clicking.
LBC. LBC. LBC. The Litblog Coop does it all this summer: author blogging, podcasts, interviews and member commentary. Go. See. Marvel.
Rebecca Skloot on "Why Do Critics Ignore Certain Books" over at the National Book Critics Circle blog. Skloot on self-published books:
"I imagine many critics don't pay attention to self published books because they figure they must suck, since no publishing house (major or minor) would publish them (am I right about this?). "
A-hem... We feel the need to mention The Middle-aged Man and the Sea. As we said last week, this self-published book has gotten some love from the L.A. Times and online. Now Entertainment Weekly gets on board, naming it one of the best of the self-published lot: "so stunning...that I could not help but move on to the next story." This collection has legs and we're rooting for it—the story "Green River" has stayed with us long after we read it. Unfortunately, a print-on-demand book like this isn't easy to find in stores—bookstores can't return them if they don't sell. For now, online is your best bet. Go see for yourself.
(Also on the NBCC blog: Dava Sobel speculates on the existence of extraterrestials.)
More book links:
Beach reading: Salon supplies a literary guide to the Jersey Shore.
All the pretty Penguins: Penguin UK celebrates their 60th birthday and the London Times takes a look at the 100 best books.
Scott McLemee sheds some light on George Scialabba, a literary critic at Harvard University —where he's on the building-maintenance staff, not a professor. And the first winner of the Balakian from NBCC.
A.B. Yehoshua on his novel A Woman in Jerusalem, the current situation in Israel, and the controversy he stirred up at last spring’s American Jewish Committee conference can be found here.
E. Lynn Harris started out as self-published with "Invisible Life" in 1991. I'm happy to say the bookstore I worked for at the time did an event with him on that book. But he was very much the exception, for several reasons.
Posted by: Doug | August 13, 2006 at 08:12 PM