I’m in Atlanta visiting my parents with my sister. It’s nice to get away for a long weekend somewhere hot. It was over 80 yesterday! I finished the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson earlier in the week. I’ve been trying to think about what to say about the three books. They’re so complicated, but so good. I’m onto another book by Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt. I have the feeling that I’m going to have to read all of his books. I read a few things in between which I’ll post about next week, one involving dragons and one involving the Greek gods. Can you guess what they are? See you all next week!

• The LA Times interviews Mark Sarvas.
• Terry Teachout reports that Elaine Dundy, author of The Dud Avocado, has died.
• Guess who won second place in Narrative Magazine’s Love Story contest? One of my all time favorite bloggers.
• My pal Mike interviews Askold Melnyczuk over at the Meeting House.
• The May issue of Boldtype is available. It includes an interview with A.M. Homes.

This article by John Flinn about being on a 16 hour flight with no reading material made me shudder. I go everywhere with a book. Mr. Bookdwarf makes fun of me. If we’re just going for a walk, I actually decide whether to take one with me or not. What if we get stuck somewhere? Given a few extra minutes, I’ll whip my book out. I even read while brushing my teeth. I can’t remember a day having gone by where I didn’t read anything. I’m a book-a-holic.

What a lovely phrased coined by Rebecca Solnit in this quite powerful essay called Men Who Explain Things. There’s more to it than the title suggests of course.

Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I mean. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.

The best part is when you’re trying to defend yourself and no matter how calm you remain, they still tell you to settle down and then stop taking you seriously. If they even did in the first place. It’s odd that I work in an industry with many powerful women. Many bookstores, publishing houses, and agencies in the US are run by women. Yet we most often see men winning the prizes, men reviewed in the book pages. I just did a rough count going through stacks of the New York Times Book Review in  my office:

• Seven cover reviews in the last 33 weeks were written by women, two by Liesl Schillinger and two by Kathryn Harrison.
• In the current week of the NYTBR, of the 15 reviews plus five mentioned in the crime roundup, four were books written by women.
• Last week’s NYTBR, four of 16 books were written by women.
• The week before, three of 14 books were written by women.
• In this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, only two women won in any category and none in the Letters, Drama, Music section.
• In this year’s National Book Awards, no women won any of the prizes.

That’s just a quick and dirty search. I’m sure people will come back saying, well, women aren’t writing as many books, or they’re not writing the kinds of books that might be nominated for prizes, or some such thing. Men still seem to dominate the conversation in the book world. Perhaps I need to speak up more.

Children of Men by PD James, which was adapted into a pretty good movie last year, is now being adapted for a television program, i09 reports. David Eick, who is the one adapting, also wrote for Battlestar Galactica, which I love. Maybe it won’t be so bad?

Go see the full cartoon at pictures for sad children.

• Granta has a fancy new website. Oooh.
• If you live in NYC, head over to the NYPL on May 13th for a program called Periodically Speaking: Literary Magazine Editors Introducing Emerging Writers. The Library is kind enough to host a little reception afterward, which is open to all who attend the reading. At 6 PM on Tuesday, May 13th, editors Hannah Tinti from One Story, Paul Foster Johnson from Aufgabe, and Willard Cook from Epiphany will introduce an emerging fiction writer, poet, and nonfiction writer, respectively.
• In honor of tax day, awesome Small Beer Press has released John Kessel’s new collection of short stories…for free! That’s right, for free you can read The Baum Plan for Financial Independence. You can download it here.
• One of my favorite sales reps has started a blog with one of his colleagues called Books on the Nightstand. They’re posting some podcasts too.
• Speaking of podcast, Ed Champion has posted his 200th interview today. I think it’s fitting that it’s a conversation between Ed and Mark Sarvas. Two bloggers who have done great literary things in the past few years. Mark’s book Harry, Revised came out just this week.

Alex Green opened his store 3 years ago in nearby Waltham, MA. He’s had ups and downs but he’s still there. I think it’s a testament to his determination. Congratulations on your three year anniversary Alex!

• A rare interview with Jorie Graham.
• One of my friends food blogs La Tartine Gourmande is mentioned in this article in the Washington Post. She’s turned her obsessive food photography into quite a career, contributing articles and recipes to the Globe on a regular basis. It’s also quite cool that many of her recipes are gluten free for the gluten intolerant.
• Robert Fagles died last week.
• Bookstream, a cool indie book distributor, has a new website. It’s not surprising how nice it is considering they used to employ Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, aka The Written Nerd.
• This isn’t a link, more a quick mention of a book I finished a few days ago, Missy by Chris Hannan. I love westerns, so the fact that it features a opium addicted flash gal traveling the wagon trail from San Francisco to the silver mines in the Sierra Nevadas had me hooked. There’s lots of wordplay and fun slang plus some good characters.