The August/September issue of Maisonneuve magazine has hit the newstands. Yours truly has a letter to the editor published in it. It is merely a letter I sent saying how much I enjoy reading them. But I am embarassed at the same time because I managed to insult McSweeney’s by name in it too. Great.

The Rake introduced me today to a new blog, Chekhov’s Mistress. It’s nice to meet you! May I say that you have a beautiful blog? Seriously. I have been thinking that this bookdwarf needs some new duds.

Sometimes people think they know everything and they don’t know nothing. It is nice to see a careful and polite response (go here for the less polite response) to what I thought of as a snide and obtuse attack on a great blog.

I read on some blogs last week about Zembla, the hot new literary magazine in London. I tried to check out their website but when I went there, the screen opened so far to the left on my computer, I was unable to do anything with it. But honestly, I was not too upset. This article explains a bit about Zembla:

Often what you read can say as much about your cool cred as your funky home furnishings or your favorite local dive bar. In the United Kingdom, hip authors such as Zadie Smith and Gwendoline Riley are taking on rock-star status among the in-the-know elite.

And these informed readers are proudly touting Zembla, the “it” magazine of the moment. Named after a fictional setting in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, this new literary magazine is also attracting the design and fashion crowds. The smart layout and artistic cover have not only lured devotees but also advertisers such as Marc Jacobs, Jil Sander, Christian Dior, Paul Smith and Issey Miyake. Who said bookworms had to look so bookish?

Uhm, yeah. The reason why I bring all this up today, is that the folks over at the LNR Book Diary put a great post about navigating the Zembla web site:

Readers, are you tired of navigable literary magazines? Are you disappointed that you can quickly find and read new articles at 3am and Spike? Would you like to spend more of life lost in a dark flash forest, unable to find the right path? Well, you’re in luck: Zembla Magazine International Literary Magazine is just the ticket!

Moorish Girl beat me to the punch in illuminating folks about 3 new books from Melville House. One of the exciting parts of the day for me is combing through the giant amounts of crap we get in the mail (do you know how many Christian publishers there are out there? I didn’t until I started working in this office). One of the packages today included these same 3 books that Moorish girl mentions. They all seem very interesting and are small attractive paperbacks to boot. Melville House also recently started publishing a series called The Art of the Novella. Included are beautiful small editions of Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville and The Lesson of the Master by Henry James.

Then you should read these short stories from the Guardian summer reading issue. Authors include William Boyd (one of my favorites), Hanif Kureishi, Helen Simpson, Jeanette Winterson, and Alice Munro.

Ed over at Return of the Reluctant (a daiily read) has written a great review of Chang Rae Lee’s Aloftover at January Magazine. This is a book I read several months ago and reviewed here as well (though not as well as Ed has done).

Sarah has some good points about the Laura Miller piece from the NYT Book Review. In this piece, Miller comments on the sheer number of books that get published—1 new fiction book every 30 minutes. I agree with Sarah on many points. Working at a bookstore, I get calls every day from an author who wants us to carry her/his book. You know what? Most of them are crap. Sure, it is just my opinon, but a lot of things should just never be published. Many are books that an author has self-published. But many are from big name publishers. Need I mention the Bill O’Reilly book coming in the Fall The O’Reilly Factor for Kids? Frankly, a lot of these books are just too hard for us to get. The discounts suck and we have to order more than we need. Sometimes it is just not worth it for us. Plus, like I said earlier, many of the self-published stuff is crap. And I agree with her about how it is hard to keep up with all the new books. I read pretty quickly too, but my TBR list seems to grow exponentially.

And the last link I am providing is to the event list at my store. As everyone knows, the DNC starts soon (something everyone in the Boston area is dreading) and we are having some killer events that week. A panel discussion with Al Franken, Toni Morrison, Joe Conason, Sidney Blumenthal, and Robert F. Kennedy, jr. on politics, books and the culture of war. We have Senator Edward Kennedy and Wesley Clark introducing Robert Byrd, who will speak about his book Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency. Plus lots more—Molly Ivins, George McGovern, Joseph Wilson, etc. So anyone in the Boston/Cambridge area can check it out.