Mercy, take a day off and things get a little crazy.
Greetings to all of you visiting by way of Gawker. Hope you'll take a few minutes to tour the site and a few more minutes to visit some of the great bloggers listed in my "Go Read Now" section.
I do want to add that while it may have seemed from my post on Friday that I have a huge axe to grind with the Book Reviewers (note the caps), I'd like to make it perfectly clear that I'm with them and the NBCC folks as far as saving the Book Reviews goes. Sometimes it just seems like the litbloggers need a champion (and not just Ed). Not that I'm volunteering, mind you. It's as if the mainstream media BRers need to be reminded that we're not in this as a big fuck you to them. Nor do we want to see a single one of their pens stilled. I know most of them know this and they're well aware that we do this for the same reason that many of them do (minus the paycheck): the love of books.
By the way, no one does blogging/reviewing/bookloving with more passion than Dan Wickett, and that's why you should read what he has to say about this whole thing.
As for the promised reviews, my plan is to have a couple up by Friday. We'll see.
Speaking of Dan, he's transitioning from poetry to short stories this month over at the Emerging Writers Network. I'm going to try to join in, especially seeing as almost half of the books I've read so far this year have been short story collections. If you want to dip your toe in the lake of classic short fiction, check out this site.
It's Larry Brown Week over at Things I'd Rather Be Doing, which for my money, I'd rather be reading Larry Brown and/or about him than just about anything, so this project pretty much makes my week.
David Lynch has a plan to put a stop to school violence: meditation. Seriously. {via}
Littourati is back and has picked up his cartographical rendering of Kerouac's On the Road. If you haven't already, link to his site and continue to follow along. Right now, he's in California's Inland Empire, including a trip to Bakersfield, the city in which I spent the first night of my marriage to Elaine. Before you laugh, we happened to be on our way to San Francisco, but needed a break. A hotel on Buck Owens Boulevard seemed a perfect place.
Nahma Sandrow of the NY Sun explores Big Sur:
Very few people choose to live here. There's a single post office and a smattering of shops, gas stations, restaurants, and spas. Most houses are tucked beyond view into the slopes above or below the highway. Stringent regulations restrict building and forbid the mounting of billboards. In winter, when even the public bus service ceases to operate, Big Sur appears nearly deserted. And that's the way residents like it.
"Big Sur," the manager of Deetjens Big Sur Inn, Bruce Neeb, said proudly, "is a magnet for oddballs."
Since the 1920s, those eccentric personalities have included photographers Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, writers Henry Miller, Robinson Jeffers, and Jack Kerouac, and the builders whose offbeat inspirations have become tourist destinations.
A cap tip your way, sir. Gracias.
Posted by: Dan Wickett | May 01, 2007 at 03:17 PM
Book reviews? Pah! I only ever judge a book by its cover. And I've ne'er been disappointed neither.
Posted by: kay | May 02, 2007 at 07:46 AM