Links Blowing Up

It is usually my policy not to post anything else on a day when I put up a new podcast (which you should really, absolutely listen to), but there is so much book-related news to talk about today, I feel compelled to compile a list of links:

• It's tough times out there, but Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, known in the blogosphere as author of The Written Nerd, is opening a bookstore in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. During the recent Brooklyn Book Fair, the neighborhood threw her a party, and the New York Times reported on it.

• Oprah has reached down from the heavens and bestowed untold wealth and fame upon David Wroblewski, author of her newest book club pick, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

• The serial is making a comeback. First Playboy published Denis Johnson's latest work Nobody Move in serial form, and now Alexander McCall Smith is serializing his latest novel, "Corduroy Mansions."

• And finally, the 10 Books Not to Read Before You Die. "5: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson. Dreary ramblings of an unreliable and workshy tosspot. Its sole distinction consists in the creation of ‘Gonzo journalism’, which made it OK for journalists, particularly rock journalists, to get shit-faced with whoever they happened to be writing about."

Goodbye LA Times Book Review

This Sunday will be the last standalone LA Times Book Review. From now on, book coverage will be carried in the Calendar section, and since I doubt they're going to be compromising any film coverage to accommodate it, that means there will be less of it. Sorry, I should say even less of it, since they've been trimming the Book Review for at least a year now.

It's not that the coverage the Times was presenting was so important. There are other places to get book coverage, and I think they will endure. But it does send a pretty bad message about literature's place in contemporary Los Angeles. And, I would argue, an inaccurate one. This is the town where hundreds of thousands of people pack the LA Times Festival of Books every year, where there are many successful reading series, and where, believe it or not, there are independent bookstores that are not only surviving but thriving and expanding (despite the weekly eulogies of Dutton's). And yet we can't sustain a once-a-week standalone book review.

So what will the future of book coverage in Los Angeles look like? Will the LA Weekly step into the void and expand its coverage? Is Mark's digital idea a possibility? Or will we continue to flock to blogs, some of which are beginning to expand their scope into more formal reviews anyway? It should be interesting, if a little depressing, to watch.

Exciting Book Related On-Line Happenings

At The Millions, Max has up his Most Anticipated Books post for the second half of 2008. That's always a great post, and this time is no different (Would that make it a "Most Anticipated Post" about the Most Anticipated Books?). If you check out the comments, you can see a book that I'm anticipating.

At The Elegant Variation, Mark interviews John Banville about a new book of his play "Conversation in the Mountains" about a meeting between Martin Heidegger and Paul Celan. An interesting interview. Highly recommended.

On Jacket Copy, Carolyn compiles a succinct rundown of review coverage of Ethan Canin's America America. Canin will be at Vroman's on July 25.

At Critical Mass, Kevin Prufer writes eloquently about one of my favorite poets, D.A. Powell.

The Silence of the Blogosphere

Has anyone else noticed that a lot of the blogs have gone silent? Not just this one, but a bunch of them. What's up? Summer doldrums? Everybody's busy reading Ulysses after I zinged them on Monday? Over at Jacket Copy, they've been going on and on about Denis Johnson's serialized novel in Playboy. Am I the only one who doesn't really care? Maybe it's just that I don't read Playboy. Counterbalance has been silent since Monday. The Elegant Variation is on the road. Everybody's busy. Even Madonna's brother's tell-all book barely caused a ripple.

As for me, I've been busy with work (both related and unrelated to the blog), and it's really hot here. Like summer-in-Riyadh hot. Yeah, I know, it's a dry heat. People keep telling me this, like I'm supposed to be happy about it. I'm not. The only person less happy than me is my dog, and he wears the same white fur coat every day, like Jay-Z.

Anyway, this post is my way of saying I'll pick up the pace a little in the near future. On Monday, I'm going to unveil some very exciting new stuff, so you'll want to be here then.

Until then, let me just say this: Lewis Black. At Vroman's. Friday night. For free. See you there. Bring your own mist machine, if you have one.

I've Been Busy, Okay?

It's been a slow week, blogging wise, which means it's been a really busy week otherwise. I promise that new and terrifying developments are coming soon to the Vroman's blog. I don't want to build it up too much. I learned my lesson from the ABA, who hyped their "new initiative" all day long like it was the Super Bowl, and then at the end of the day it was like, "Oh. You changed the logo. Right on." (I kid the ABA.) Anyway, I can't say much about it, but suffice to say that once you've experienced it, you'll never play the piano again.

In the meantime, may I direct you to a few interesting literary bits on the internet:

• Please read the terrific interview with Julie Klam on the Granta website. It's every bit as funny as you'd expect from her.

• Max, the founder and editor of The Millions, appeared on Minnesota Public Radio this morning to discuss the role of literary blogs in the critical sphere. You can check it out here.

• The Inside Flap, the excellent blog from Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee, WI, has some nice things to say about David Benioff's City of Thieves, a book we at Vroman's also really like.
  

• The Book Digest at The Morning News features a couple of authors with upcoming events at Vroman's -- Darrin Strauss, for his new book More Than It Hurts You, and George Lakoff, for The Political Mind. Get your George Lakoff tickets at Vroman's today!

• So...what'd ya think of the Top Chef finale? I was pulling for Richard, but I'm happy that Stephanie won. You just knew Lisa wasn't going to win, no matter how good her final menu was. According to Bravo's in-show poll, only 3% of the people watching the show wanted her to win. That's a sub-Bush level approval rating right there. While I bet her food was good, how much better can you make Tom Kha Kai soup? Living in LA, I'm pretty sure I've had amazing Tom Kha Kai soup, while I don't think I've ever had most of the stuff Stephanie made (to say nothing of Richard's bacon ice cream).
  

Friday Link Fest

After two marathon posts about BEA, I'm not sure what blogginess I've got in me today, so I'll make this brief.

• Stephanie Klein, who will be at Vroman's this Tuesday, is guest blogging at Powell's. Check it out.

• Emma Straub interviews Lorrie Moore about what kind of music she likes over at the Avery Anthology blog. We all know in what high esteem I hold Ms. Moore, so you can imagine my jealousy to discover that Moore made Emma a mixed CD. That would be like getting a birthday card from, I don't know, Pedro Martinez.
  

• The new Hipster Book Club is up. Yay! Included are interviews with Sloane Crosley and Josh Kilmer-Purcell.
  

• Mark Sarvas interviewed at LA Weekly: "LA Weekly: Do you find that the power balance has shifted? There is a sense, with lit blogs, of the seizing of the means of production.

  Sarvas: There is, but I wonder if the power is a bit ... illusory? My blog has a great deal of visibility, but I’m not finding that the turnout for my events is necessarily much higher than for any other literary-fiction book tour coming through town. I’m starting to get a sense of what the limits of our power are." That's the pain of working bookstore events. You see so many talented authors come through town and the turnout is sometimes not what you'd hope. The level of stress before a sparsely-attended event can be too much to bear. I hate to think what it's like for the author.
  

• I got a new chair yesterday. It's awesome. It swivels and tilts and rolls, and it has ass-kicking lumbar support. I don't really have a joke here, I just...it's a great chair.
  

My Tuesday Morning Hangover

Well, BEA is over. I staggered into work this morning to find about a thousand RSS feed updates to read in addition to a whole mess of emails. A full write-up (with pictures!) is coming tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can read a condensed version of my experience at The Millions. In lieu of the full-on BEA post, I offer you some quick hits to other literary bits of note.

• Alan Furst is at Vroman's tonight. Scott Tamberg interviews him for the LA Times: "With the present book, I wanted to write a "9/10 novel" -- what went on before the catastrophe. And the way to do that was to look at Poland and France, the countries that were early occupied, the real crushing defeats. I thought it would be natural to have a French military attaché in Poland, concentrating on German war plans."

• David Benioff's City of Thieves is getting rave reviews all over the place. Here's one from an independent bookseller down at Warwick's in San Diego. David Benioff will be at Vroman's tomorrow night.

• The final episode of the first season of Titlepage is up.
  

• I'll drift into BEA land for a minute. One of my favorite stops on my death march across the BEA convention floor was meeting Eric and Eliza Jane from the small press Two Dollar Radio. They've recently published a book by novelist and screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer called The Drop Edge of Yonder. Wurlitzer has an essay on Maud Newton's blog chronicling his move into the world of small presses. It's pretty great. (Wurlitzer wrote Two Lane Blacktop. So now you have to read the essay.)
  

Friday is For Links

As the weekend looms, some links to send you on your way:

• The 1001 books to read before you die. I can just see myself getting really far into the list, like one book away, then finding myself on a doomed airplane. Plummeting to earth, my death just moments away, I stand up: "Shit! Does anybody on-board have a copy of Moll Flanders?" Making lists like this is stupid.
  

• The Morning News has a list of stuff they like on the Internet this year. They call it the 2008 Eddys. I was all jazzed to check out Colorwars, which they dub "what the web’s next wave will look like: Twitter-fied mob jollies, or, Improv Everywhere applied to Web 2.0." But then the link was broken.

• This is what happens when Mark Sarvas goes on book tour and misses a few days of blogging.

• Books aren't the only thing people like to list. "How this ranking of the parade of gleaming pneumatic women will affect young men isn't clear."

• Lewis Black is coming to Vroman's in June. I'm excited. You will be too after you watch this video (Warning! Audio is very NSFW. Dude shouts a lot):

• Apropos of nothing at all, how badass is Kingsley Amis' Wikipedia photo:
  

Thursday List of Links

As I'm lilting along in the calm between two enormous, high-energy events (Barbara Walters last night, James Frey tonight), I think I'll keep today's post short and pointless:

• Critic Wyatt Mason has started a blog called Sentences at the Harper's site. The posts are smart and very literary. I doubt he'll be able to keep up this kind of word count on a daily basis, but so far, it's one of the most intellectually stimulating blogs on the net (after just two days). Does that sound like a backhanded complement? It isn't.
  

• Don't look now, but Nam Le is getting the full-on Charles Bock treatment with a rave review from Michiko Kakutani followed by a profile in the Times. "Like most of the other details in “The Boat” (Alfred A. Knopf), his collection that came out Tuesday, they were pulled from assiduous research he did from a fungus-plagued farmhouse in Iowa City, his home for two years while at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop." Hey, I've been to that fungus-plagued farmhouse! Cool. Hopefully, we'll all be spared the Gawker backlash that Bock was subjected to.
  

• Books that will make you a man. I really dig the images they found for each of the books, although, judging by this list, I'm not terribly manly (haven't gotten around to the Plutarch's Lives yet...go ahead, mock my ignorance), and any manliness I currently possess, I acquired in the 8th grade (A Separate Peace? Please.).

• Robert Rauschenberg passed away this week. I'm not going to say much about the man or his work (What it does it matter what some jackass with a bookstore blog thinks?), but I will say that seeing a retrospective of his at the Centre Georges Pompidou was one of the highlights of my honeymoon in Paris. I was ignorant of all the work he'd done in dance, and to see even film and video of his work with the Merce Cunningham company was revelatory. I'll also say this -- I'd like to bring back this look:
  
  

It's smart, youthful, spare, neat without seeming overly fastidious. I wish I looked like this. Of course I also go through periods where I'd kill to look like Sam Shepard in Days of Heaven, so go figure.

• Willy Vlautin will be at Vroman's tomorrow night to read from his new book Northline. He'll also be playing some songs on his guitar. To get you in the mood, I located this rare You Tube footage of Willy in action:
  

If he's this good while playing in the "work center" of a Sheraton hotel room, imagine how ass-kicking he'll be in the Vroman's event space. A reading and a concert. How can you miss it?

Vroman's Authors Everywhere!

Two writers who will be appearing at Vroman's in the near future are getting some major online love today.

The first is Nina Revoyr, who is interviewed by Denise Hamilton over at The Elegant Variation. Nina will be at Vroman's (along with special guest Janet Fitch) on May 13.

The second is Willy Vlautin, who was featured in today's installment of Paper Cuts' "Living with Music" feature. Willy will be reading (and performing) at Vroman's on May 16.

Rounding Up "The Wire"

When I started writing this blog, I promised myself I would wait at least a month before posting anything about "The Wire." I mean, it's a TV show, and this here is a book blog, right? Anyway, today, I'm breaking that promise. There's simply too much going on out there not to comment on it.

With the 5th and final season debuting two weeks ago, "The Wire," HBO's crime drama cum social novel, has been lauded by critics and written about in nearly every major media publication, electronic or otherwise. Making the most noise are Mark Bowden's critique of the show's creator, David Simon, in The Atlantic and Simon's essay about his time at The Sun, appearing in this month's Esquire . Even the Freakonomics blog gets into the act, with a piece by Sudhir Venkatesh (appearing at Vroman's on January 23), one whose prescience might become more and more evident as we move through this season.

What interests me most about the media storm surrounding "The Wire" is the way it has captivated the literary and book blog scene. Novelist James Hynes (Kings of Infinite Space) is officially obsessed, penning three straight blog posts about the show, including an excellent plea to return to the series inspiration and read a novel. Languagehat had some fun with the technicalities of the show's language. There was even lit-blog representation at the Season 5 premiere, as Maud Newton made the trip down to Baltimore. I can't remember a TV show, even something like The Sopranos, getting this kind of ink from folks like this. Maybe this is a book blog post after all.