Around the Water Cooler

  • Pinky’s Paperhaus has a nice-looking new home.
  • And Beatrice has some new roommates. Ron’s asked Scott of Slushpile, Dibs, Dj from Bookburger, and Rod Lott from Bookgasm to post on his site.
  • Alex Beam shares his secrets of un-reading with Globe readers. “Books are expensive, and most of them are not very well written anyway. I have not read dozens of books in just the past few months. I am prepared to share my secrets of un-reading with you.” Don’t bother reading the new Bob Woodward he says. The contents have been all over the news for the past few months and Woodward has been everywhere in the media for the past few weeks. Woodward’s “scoop” is that the Bush administration has mishandled the war in Iraq. Wow. Really? The best line of the article has to be: “I read a book about Fiorina a few years ago, in which she was trying to convince Hewlett-Packard to pay for shipping her yacht from the East Coast to the West Coast. Tough choices indeed.”
  • The Globe also ran an interesting article this Sunday on “new wave literary fabulists”, including one of my favorite writers Kelly Link.
  • It’s book week at Slate.
  • The Rake is full of rage again. This time, he directs his anger toward Nick Hornby. Deserving target? Quite possibly. I personally find Hornby irritating, but I know lots of people love him.
  • Bud Parr has posted a nice Q&A with Laird Hunt, author of The Exquisite