A month ago we announced Letters To Each Other, which allowed subscribers to Letters In The Mail to send a one page letter and SASE. …more

Fakhir returns to discuss the mysteries of God and parking with Alina Simone in this round of Chats With Random Men. …more

Turns out The Great Gatsby is good for more than passing eighth grade English – try seduction.  May not get you a marriage proposal, but might be good for a free lunch.

Used books are on the rise, fueling book sales from Salt Lake City to Saint Louis. Take notes, Wall Street – while not many companies can say they made money in 2009, used booksellers like Half Price Books and Alibris did just that.

I finished The God of Small Things in a pleathery airplane seat 30,000 feet above who-knows-where during the year and a half I lived in India as a speechwriter for an executive there.   …more

Ryerson Review of Journalism brings hope to small publications by giving three good reasons that bigger may not be better – Geez, Spacing, and Broken Pencil; and why they’re tiny but thriving.

Good news for writers aspiring to start something small and readers who prefer petite – it turns out the bad economy may be on the side of small: “People are much less likely to give up their fascinations or their passions in bad times. And they normally have more time to work on a magazine when they don’t have a job.”

Niche is in, read all about it…

Tracy Kidder talks to the Bygone Bureau about the danger of rereading your work: “Only two things can happen, and neither one is good. Either I’m reading and think how can I possibly have allowed that sentence to go to print, or I think, ‘Did I used to write that well?’”  The quality of free writing: “Dreck.”  Writing talent: “Anyways, talent… I’ve never understood what that really is.”  Why he bought back the rights to one of his books so he would be the last person to ever read it: “I wrote it in a kind of swashbuckling first person, which I dislike.”  And, the intelligence of writers: “Yeah. I don’t think that all really good writers are very smart in a sort of academic way. In fact, some seem downright stupid.”  Don’t be insulted; I’m sure he wasn’t talking about you.

More wisdom from Tracy Kidder here…

Laura Stevens has great hair. The best hair in the room, 94.3% of the time.  It makes me jealous.

She is the only non-adopted of her parents’ six children.  …more