I’ve been silent about the whole subject of the disappearing book coverage in newspapers so far. Usually, I’d be shouting loud and clear about it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll explain. A few weeks ago, the Atlanta Journal Constitution announced that they would be eliminating the position of book editor. The National Book Critics Circle then announced a campaign to save book review pages. Each day they post comments from well known authors and editors about the value of book reviews. And of course bloggers got on board as well, not without a bit of controversy of their own. Today Motoko Rich has an article The New York Times about the print versus online divide, that includes comments some of my friends Mark, Ed, Maud, Dan, and Jeff.

I haven’t weighed in on this issue yet for a few reasons. One, it feels odd to try and save pages that I regularly complain about (I’m specifically referring to the Boston Globe. I do not want the book review section to disappear, but I lament the often boring nature of the section. I want to save it though. It needs to exist here, as do all review pages, but this should be a chance to for change in the review industry (I hesitate to use that word, but can’t think of a better term). Reviews have gotten stodgy and boring and I don’t blame the internet either. I think people have gotten lazy. Just as scholarship evolves, so shouldn’t criticism. But again, I’m all for saving the review pages.

The other reason I haven’t spoken out yet reflects more of a uncomfortableness that comes from having a blog. The newspapers certainly don’t seem to love the literary blogs and online community. That’s changing I know, but it’s hard to read about saving these pages when meanwhile, they’re trashing what I do, eg Richard Ford’s comments at the end of today’s NYT article.

Mr. Ford, who has never looked at a literary blog, said he wanted the judgment and filter that he believed a newspaper book editor could provide. “Newspapers, by having institutional backing, have a responsible relationship not only to their publisher but to their readership,” Mr. Ford said, “in a way that some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute maybe doesn’t.”

I’m not sitting in a basement Mr. Ford. I’m in a book store, where we actually sell your books on a daily basis. So thanks for that. Regardless of how those comments make me feel, I do think it important to state for the record that I believe book reviews should be saved and I’ll do what I can to help.

Massachusetts, that is. Yes, because I like him so much, we’re getting Rupert Thomson for an event sometime this coming August. I’m ecstatic. I haven’t read his new book Death of a Murderer yet, but a copy is winging its way to me right now. This is the perfect way to end a work week, after such a disastrous day wherein our computer system went down for several hours. Needless to say, I squealed like a girl when Amanda told me and I can’t get the grin off my face. You’d think I had just kissed Clive Owen or something.

George Tenet’s new book At the Center of the Storm, which blasts the Bush administration and in particular Cheney for pushing us into the war, supposedly goes on sale Monday April 30th. Yet somehow The New York Times managed to legally get their hands on one. “A copy of the book was purchased at retail price in advance of publication by a reporter for The New York Times.” Uhm, where did you purchase this book? My store has our initial order in the basement. We can’t put them on sale until Monday unless we want to face the wrath of HarperCollins. There are several problems with the NYT‘s buying this book ahead of time. One, some store is selling this ahead of time, which just isn’t fair to the rest of us. Imagine if we put our Harry Potter on sale a few days early? What would the other book stores do? Secondly, we’re going to get a ton of customers in the store this weekend wanting the book and we have to tell them that no, we can’t sell it to them yet. This kind of stunt just pisses me off. They do it all the time and get away with it.

http://goldencompassmovie.com/goldenCompass_blog.swf?id=3712

Garth over at The Millions conducts a walking tour of NYC independent bookstores. He argues that the independents provide an experience that the corporates can’t reproduce (hear hear!). Perhaps I should put together something similar for Boston….

Dang, I wish I was in New York for the week as the PEN World Voices festival kicks off. It starts tonight at Cooper Union with a discussion called Green Thoughts: Writers on the Environment. Speakers will include Billy Collins, Jonathan Franzen, Moses Isegawa, Pico Iyer, Geert Mak, Marilynne Robinson, Roxana Robinson, Salman Rushdie, Gary Shteyngart, Janne Teller, and Colson Whitehead. What a lineup! All of the events are studded with great, talented writers. If you’re in New York, take advantage!

Today kicks off Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die week over at the LBC. This is a great book by Mark Binelli about a slapstick comedy team. We’re having all kinds of fun stuff this week, so head on over.

I admit it. I’ve never read any Virginia Woolf up until now. Professor Damrosch, who teaches my Major British Writers class that I am taking at Harvard, has put To the Lighthouse on the syllabus for tomorrow’s class, so I’m reading Woolf for the first time finally. I think I’ve always been a bit scared of reading her, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s her reputation as one of the preeminent woman writers, her style and life so thoroughly examined and well-documented. Woolf, the personality, seems so high-minded that I imagine her thinking I was beneath her notice. I feel like I need Fernham here to read along with me and explain passages.
But I forged ahead and now I’m reading To the Lighthouse and it’s wonderful! It’s full of inner thoughts and there’s a rhythm to reading this book that I can’t get on the subway to and from work. No, this will require sitting down tonight to finish the whole book I think. I’m excited to go to class tomorrow and listen to Damrosch’s insightful comments. After all, I now think Middlemarch, which we finished with in class a few weeks ago, perhaps one of the best books I’ve ever read.

• Fiction: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• General Non-Fiction: The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
• Biography: The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate
• History: The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff
• Poetry: Native Guard by Natasha Tretheway
• Drama: Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire

The LitBlog Coop announces its spring 2007 Read This! pick today: Alan DeNiro’s debut short story collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. Carolyn, the nominator, has a nice post about why she picked this book. I really liked this book when I read it last summer, so I was pleased to see it nominated.