Ed’s parody of Christopher Hitchen’s made me giggle. I read Hitchen’s review of the new Harry Potter last week and wondered if I were in bizarro world. It’s not that I can’t believe he’s read the books, but why would the NYT pick Christopher Hitchens, the man who wrote an entire book on how religion poisons everything, to review it (for the umpteenth time I might add)? Who knows?

This week, we’re appreciating Katherine Weber’s Triangle, a novel about the devastating Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, nominated by Levi at Litkicks. The author herself will be blogging sometime this week, so be sure to check back.

*Yawn* Oh, sorry. I keep yawning every time I look at the recently announced Booker Longlist. It’s a boring list and it doesn’t help that only four of the titles are available here in the US. McEwan’s the favorite so far (what a surprise). Oh well. Hopefully they don’t pick one of the books that we can’t get. It’ll be so irritating for my store, having to field a million queries on what won and how can they get it and why don’t we have it. I don’t always agree with the prestige that these prizes seem to bestow on the winner, but the books move usually (unless you’ve been written by DBC Pierre) once they win one of these things.

Part Two of the roundtable on Nicola Griffiths Always has been put today. There are some great conversations going on in the comments from Part One.

Nicola has the guest spot in Carrie’s new 5×5 column.

She also has a guest column at Booksquare.

Gwenda has started a roundtable discussion over at the LBC on Nicola Griffith’s Always. I haven’t read all of the books in the series, but I can’t wait to get to them now.

What she said.

The Read This! pick is…Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe! Guess who nominated it? Yep, I did. I’m so happy that the rest of the LBC liked this book. It’s so different, but I really think it works. You can read here more about why I nominated it. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be discussing all of the nominees, which include Triangle by Katherine Weber and Always by Nicola Griffith. I enjoyed the other two books immensely. The discussions should be good all around.

Three Percent, the blog of the University of Rochester’s new publishing house Open Letter, started up a month or so ago it looks like. This project was begun by Chad Post, recently of Dalkey Archive. Their focus is works in translation and I can’t wait to see what they put out.

Lame title, I know, but I’m off to Bolivia tomorrow morning to visit Mr. Bookdwarf’s brother in La Paz. I’m not sure about our itinerary. I’m more worried about the altitude sickness (less worried about random diseases because the thorough nurse at the doctor’s office gave me 3 shots plus malaria medication). I also hope I get to pet some alpaca, like the cute ones below:

I’m bringing along plenty of good reading material: New England White by Stephen Carter, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam, Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee, and possibly Denis Johnson’s new book Tree of Smoke, if I can convince Mr. Bookdwarf to carry it. Wish me luck!

Literary site Litminds asked me a few questions recently. I’m always nervous about interviews—afraid I’ll start gushing and say something really stupid. Even though I emailed the answers and was able to edit myself, I guess I’m a little self-conscious. Odd, considering I write this blog.