The Olive Reader

I never fully trusted Janet Maslin’s film reviews. So let’s just say that when she switched to reviewing books, her trustworthiness didn’t spike. True to form in today’s Times, she somehow goes through a three-part process of: a) writing a first half of the review that makes the book sound truly off-putting, maybe even regrettable; b) then praising the book in a semi-convincing way, leaving you to wonder why she was OK publishing an initial few paragraphs that, in my opinion, would cause many people to stop reading; and c) finishing up with a description of the book’s finale…

The book’s triumphant coda is a final exam rehashing questions raised by the narrative. True or false: “Blue van Meer has read too many books.” True or false: “Reading an obscene number of reference books is greatly advantageous to one’s mental health.”

…that makes it sound like something I would go to great lengths to avoid reading. Here, judge the judge for yourself.

Check out this very cool website that sells purses… made out of books.

All New Yorker Pieces stop at the point where the person makes a bad discovery about himself or herself or the world. That he is or she is a failure personally—in love, usually, romantic love or familial love—or that the world is a failure toward his personal or her personal sensitive nature—that the world is violent, that unequal distribution of power causes pain and unhappiness, usually to the less powerful, but sometimes to the powerful as well…
So begins Mary Burger in her essay All New Yorker Stories. (via Equanimity)

“Last week, Amazon.com put up a page that listed Untitled Thomas Pynchon at a svelte 992 pages and bore a description purportedly written by the master himself.”
(via Conversational Reading)

Shocking.

Nabokov had a passion for lepidoperology.

Here’s a cleverly named site, The Silence of the City, devoted to stories rejected by The New Yorker for its Talk of the Town section. I can’t vouch for the stories, since I’ve only briefly glanced — though it’s my opinion that things, even if they’re not abject, tend to get rejected for reasons — but the site’s a good idea.

(Via Critical Mass)

Here’s the long list of nominees for The Dylan Thomas Prize. Nick Laird, esteemed guest blogger and author of Utterly Monkey and To A Fault, has made the first cut.

As I’ve boldly stated before, people tend to argue. The case is no different as the movie version of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh goes into pre-production. Hollywood fiances threaten to ruin everything.

Here at ye olde Olive Reader, we mourn the parting of our dear EV. EV, besides being one of the nicest people I know (and smartest, damn him), will be very much missed by all of us at Harper. Especially me.

OH EV, why are you leaving? He taught us about Wordcount and shared photos of bookcases tumbling. He led us to KGB and told us when PEN announced something.

But it was when he drooled over Neglected Books that I knew we were in serious trouble. Being the good-hearted, sensitive man he is — he’s off and left us for The Dalkey Archive Press located in (get this) NORMAL, Illinois. I personally find that leaving NYC for NORMAL, Illinois is hilarious. But that’s just me.

So. Au revoir, mon EV. Please let us know what you’re up to — maybe you can guest blog about the goings-on in Normal?

Mickey Spillane, the creator of Mike Hammer, the heroic but frequently sadistic private detective who blasted his way through some of the most violent novels of the 1940’s and 50’s, died yesterday at his home in Murrells Inlet, S.C. He was 88 and had homes in South Carolina and New York City.

I haven’t looked into this too much yet, but it seems smart on first glance.

The Frontlist is a consortium of developers and writers from literary communities. We’ve formed to provide a new fair way to provide talented unpublished writers to have work annotated and critiqued by peers. The most well-received work will rise to the top, to be considered by a publisher.

The Frontlist is a community of talented writers that self-select work that they feel may be of interest to a publisher. Writers, upon signing up to The Frontlist, will be able to submit sample chapters of work that they are looking to publish. They will then be invited to provide detailed critiques on several pieces of work. Once they have finished this, their own work will go up for critique. Each month, the most well received work will be fast-tracked to the desk of a respected agent or publisher who specialises in the work’s genre.
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But nothing like that has ever happened in the slow-moving world of books. The book business – both publishing and bookselling – has felt the cold winds of consolidation and globalisation blowing forcefully in the past few years. Earlier this week independent bookshops were left feeling very exposed when Ottakar’s, the second-largest book chain, finally fell to the largest, Waterstone’s, creating an even bigger and more powerful chain across the country. Added to this, the huge supermarket chains compete directly with the independent booksellers, and undercut them so heavily on price that the bookshops, with their high-street rents, cannot survive. Forty have closed in the past six months. In 2005 Tesco increased its book sales by 50 per cent, and earlier this year it was the top retailer for a number of bestsellers. In fact, the supermarkets now sell more books (with only a tiny choice of titles) than the whole independent sector put together.

HarperPerennial, and the Olive Reader, are down with all the latest tech-mology, including podcasts. This time out, we’re featuring an interview with Catherine Hanrahan, author of Lost Girls and Love Hotels.

The singer-songwriter Tom Waits is hitting the road…In a statement about his motivation, he said, “We need to go to Tennessee to pick up some fireworks, and someone owes me money in Kentucky.”