Dailies

Nan Goldberg, on the lasted Scott Turow.

Michael Kenney on Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy, by Malcolm Gaskill.

Sarah Tomlinson on Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir, by Lisa Crystal Carver.

Janet Maslin on The Truth (With Jokes), by Al Franken.

Tom Zeller, Jr. on Gary Benchley, Rock Star, by Paul Ford.

Orange County Register: “Ryan Gattis, 27, is a rising star in the literary world. He's that rare cultural mix-master who can both lecture on Victorian poets and write a novel about the "`gangbanger' Armageddon" that's a hot property in Hollywood.”

Ack, a book review all in bold.  I guess that means we should pay attention?

Yet another way to break into the publishing biz: “Starting in August, any author (established or self-published) who has a book for sale on Amazon.com can submit a previously unpublished fiction or non-fiction piece (2,000-10,000 words) for customers to download as a web page, PDF, or plain-text e-mail for $0.49 each.”

Dumbest. Headline. Ever.

Noam Chomsky: “The beauty of concision is that you can only repeat conventional thoughts."

Surfer fiction.

The cover of the new Amy Tan shocked the heck out of me when I first saw it this weekend.  Alas, don’t judge a book…