Make sure to check out the Rumpus Poetry Book Club’s online discussion with Shane Book, this month’s featured poetry author who brings us Ceiling of Sticks.

You can read the transcript, in which book club members ask Book (real name) about his background, his different uses of form poetry, and his editing process. Also notable: how hip-hop influences his work. “How can one NOT sample,” Book asks, “with the data flow bombarding us first worlders?” …more

1. Confused about where we are in the book club queue? Eager to find out what’s coming later in the fall? Haven’t ever witnessed Steven Elliott use the phrase “shake and bake”? Look no further than Book Club Announcements.

2. Adam Levin, author of The Instructions, constructs an original manifesto on how to start a revolution in Time Out Chicago. First on the list: Think small. “Don’t think too much, if at all, about uprisings. Bind yourself to human beings. Have good friends and fall in love.” …more

-Tao Lin, author of the August book club pick Richard Yates, has become notorious for his pranks, cons, and general attempts to outwit his readers and/or neighborhood bookstore employees. So when the New York Observer‘s Christian Lorentzen set out to interview him, he decided to replicate Lin’s style. Written entirely in third person, the Observer interview doesn’t so much mock Lin as it does reveal some of his strategies, celebrating his unique take on the modern novel. …more

-Tao Lin’s in the spotlight this month; his latest book Richard Yates is our August Book Club pick, and it seems like everyone has some questions for him. Including, well, Tao Lin. …more

-The big news for Doug Dorst this week was that his new book, The Surf Guru, was reviewed in The New York Times Book Review. Writer Robin Romm extols Dorst’s ability to push limits, to stretch the conventions of what stories should like like. Plus, Romm adds of Dorst’s tales, “They’re fun-loving, testosterone-rich yarns.” Boston Globe reviewer Eric Liebetrau also praises Dorst’s new work, admiring how it combines light fantasy with gritty vignettes of reality, with stories that are “acidly funny” and revolve around characters with self-destructive tendencies. Despite their defects, there’s a sense of Dorst’s “obvious empathy toward his flawed creations” that runs through the narratives. The Daily Beast noticed The Surf Guru enough to add it their week’s “Hottest Reads” section. And most importantly, The Rumpus sat down with its own book club to have a discussion with Dorst. Read an edited version of that discussion to find out how The Surf Guru got its name, Dorst’s most treasured stories in the collection, and what books are on the author’s nightstand these days.

-You probably noticed that John Brandon’s Citrus County made the first page of the NY Times Book Review on July 18th. So did Matt Stewart, an SF local writer whose novel The French Revolution just hit shelves. Stewart tries not to get too jealous of Brandon in his sincere and heartfelt essay in The Millions about the challenges of publishing his first novel. Atlanta’s Creative Loafing Blog reviews Citrus County, calling it a “criminal bildungsroman.” And in case you want to hear the author’s inflections and intonations while you absorb the novel, tune into Square Books’s Podcast, featuring John Brandon reading from his latest book.

-In case you haven’t read about Tao Lin’s self-promoting contest, you can find out all the juicy details here. Examples of your competition, should you choose to enter? Here and here. And to read an interesting piece about Lin’s publicity methods? Turn to The Atlantic, where reviewer Hua Hsu finds Lin’s relentless narcissism somewhat admirable. All of this will help prepare you for Richard Yates, Lin’s latest book and also The Rumpus Book Club’s August pick.

-Last week, Nerve‘s The Hype Line claimed Doug Dorst’s The Surf Guru as one of the five things it couldn’t look away from. Writes Ray Rahman: “When you pick up a book written by a guy who knows that a ‘chigoe’ is a sand-dwelling variety of a flea (Jeopardy! Episode #4985, for $400), you’re pretty much guaranteed some great, left-of-center storytelling.” Suite 1o1 reviewer Alex Sharp senses that “Dorst seems to channel a sense of doom…the Surf Guru is creepy and fun.” And Karla Starr from The Oregonian admires Dorst’s adaptibility, the way “his chameleonic style consistently nails the right voice for each story.” Steve Bennet interviews Dorst for his Express-News interview, calling his new novel “very Zen, with a simple serenity that feels almost like haiku.”

-Want to know what Dorst is thinking about right now? …more

We’re sure you’ve been anticipating Rick Moody’s The Four Fingers of Death (out today) as much as we have, but in case you have some catching up to do, here’s a round-up of the reviews: …more

You read last week in The Rumpus about the new “statistical analysis tool” that tells you who you write like. Coding Robots, a group of software developers, seemingly created I Write Like just for fun; the page analyzes your word choice and writing style and spits back a writer it compares you to (out of a list of 50 writers, according to Dmitry Chestnykh in his interview with The Awl).

I pasted in a recent clip from my food blog Oats, a descriptive (and highly sensual, said a friend) description of corn, to see which author I Write Like would connect me to. …more

New this week, The Rumpus presents a smattering of Book Club related news, including highlights of past, present, and future books in our queue.

-You may have already caught Daniel Handler’s excellent review of John Brandon’s Citrus County (bloggers are linking to it left and right). Now, check out the follow-up on Paper Cuts: Stray Questions for: John Brandon, a short interview with Brandon that touches on his regional ties to the South and his affinity for Percival Everett.

-It’s been a big week for Doug Dorst, who penned The Rumpus’s July Book Club pick, The Surf Guru. …more

In her book Tortured: When Good Soldiers Do Bad Things, journalist Justine Sharrock takes a close look at low-ranking soldiers who engaged in acts of torture. …more

We’ve all heard the stories about people getting fired from jobs because of overly revealing Facebook photos, or of couples breaking up by changing their Facebook “relationship status” before even talking to one another. Though Facebook is meant to exist in virtual reality, we have given it the power to seep into and intermingle with our actual reality in ways we can’t always control.

Four student programmers from NYU’s Courant Institute, like many of us, see this as a huge problem. Only unlike most of us, they aim to do something about it.

Introducing Diaspora*, “the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.” Created by the aforementioned nerds from NYU–Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer, and Ilya Zhitomirskiy–Diaspora* aims to give anyone their own “seed,” a personal web server that stores personal information, photos, and media and shares it with friends.

Sound similar to Facebook? It is, only Diaspora* aims to cut out the middleman, the centralized power that takes and redistributes your personal information without your ultimate control.  As Grippi explains in a short video, “In our real lives, we talk to each other. We don’t need to hand our messages to a hub.” …more

Starved for funds, the United States Postal Service recently considered cutting its mail delivery service down to five-days a week–not a huge surprise considering their losses over the last couple of years and the fact that Americans are relying more and more on electronic measures of communication.

In short, letter writing is becoming a dying art. Blogger Shaun Usher intends to preserve as many beautiful remnants of this fading form as he can, and publish them on an elegant blog called Letters of Note. Simply put, Letters of Note publishes “Scans/Photos where possible. Fakes sneered at. Updated every weekday.”

Usher has managed to obtain hundreds of written messages from literary celebrities, famous musicians, soldiers, political figures, and ordinary people and published original scans as well as meticulous transcripts (so we can read illegible handwriting) on his website. …more

Singer/Songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, a folk opera set in a post-Apocalyptic Depression-Era, illuminates the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus through the twangs and harmonies of folk music. If that seems like a disjointed mix of influences, listen to Hadestown and you’re likely to be convinced that Mitchell’s ambitious project holds all of its thematic strains together with plenty of gorgeous songwriting and bluesy angst.

Though it’s been staged and performed live since 2006, Righteous Babe Records (Ani DiFranco’s label) just released a CD recording, which features Mitchell’s angelic voice as well as that of Ani DiFranco, the haunting melodies of Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), and the deep, dusty vocals of Greg Brown.

NPR just featured an interview of Mitchell on Weekend Edition along with two songs from Hadestown. To read more about the history of folk opera and Anaïs Mitchell’s music, check out “The Waitress on the Ukulele: A Short History of the Folk Opera“, a Rumpus Original published in January.

I’ve just started walking with photographer Mark Murrmann down Polk Street in San Francisco, and already he’s busted out his camera and started snapping shots of a street construction project. For Murrmann, no scene is too mundane to make memorable. …more

With healthcare reform moving at such a sluggish rate, we’ve all become pretty exasperated by the worsening creases in Washington.

In the face of so much disagreement, thank goodness the environmental movement is so unified. Who in their right mind can disagree on the war on global warming?

Not so fast. Johann Hari has just written a provocative, if not controversial, piece in The Nation on the divide within the environmental movement. In “The Wrong Kind of Green,” Hari takes a stab at environmental organizations that receive money from corporations, many of which are among the largest transgressors in the war on environmental pollution.

“Imagine if Amnesty International was dependent, just to write human rights reports, on funding from Dick Cheney… …more

It’s that one day in the midst of dreary February that’s supposed to remind you to reach out to the one you love or lust after. But chances are you are either swinging solo or just sick of all the saccharine propaganda pouring from every storefront and supermarket display.

To get in a more appropriate mood for the day, we present to you the Choose Your Own Valentine’s Day Music Adventure Guide. Pick your pathway and throw all romantic pretenses out the window: …more

First there was the bitter move by Amazon to remove all Macmillan titles from its digital inventory after Macmillan demanded higher e-book pricing.

Then two more publishing houses publicly denounced Amazon’s dime a dozen approach to pricing e-books at $9.99. Now, in the latest installment in the tug-of-war over e-book prices, publishers have convinced online retailers to sell e-books on a varied scale, ranging from $12.99–$14.99.

But as the diligent New York Times reporters Motoko Rich and Brad Stone reveal, no one knows yet how consumers will react. Even if publishers have reason to celebrate their small triumph in e-book pricing, they will still have to struggle with the American readers’ complacency towards paying much for literature. “The sense of entitlement of the American consumer is absolutely astonishing,” said author Douglas Preston in Rich and Stone’s article. “It’s the Wal-Mart mentality, which in my view is very unhealthy for our country. It’s this notion of not wanting to pay the real price of something.”

Read all sorts of perspectives about this past week’s e-book pricing ordeal by selecting from The Virginia Quarterly Review’s links.

Desperate to save their businesses, the private companies who sell loans to college students have been heavily lobbying the government to keep subsidizing their loan programs. A bill that will overhaul the private loan industry recently passed in Congress with clear support from President Obama, who stated in his recent State of the Union Address “no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.”

The new proposal would retract government subsidies to private lending companies and cap the amount students have to pay back every month to 10% of their salary if they make more than $16,245 a year, reports Bryan Gerhart in his article for the California News Service.  Loans that hadn’t been paid back after 10 years would even be forgiven if that student worked for a nonprofit or government organization. …more

Update: Amazon caves to Macmillan’s demands! Read on to learn more about the dispute:

After Macmillan Publishers challenged Amazon‘s pricing of e-books for Kindle users, Amazon retaliated on Friday by pulling not only all e-books by Macmillan authors but also physical literature by the publisher as well.

Macmillan is a large international publishing house with smaller  presses such as Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martins Press and Henry Holt under its wing. Macmillan’s decision to pressure Amazon to raise its prices for e-books  has caused Amazon to render its digital shelves purposefully bereft of books by authors like Jeffrey Eugenides and Hilary Mantel. …more

Not long ago Bloomsbury published author Justine Larbalestier’s novel Liar, which revolves around an African-American protagonist, with a white girl’s face on the cover. The choice was made against Larbalestier’s wishes and to the shock of many readers, and Bloomsbury eventually agreed to publish another edition with a cover model more in line with Liar’s protagonist’s appearance.

Astonishingly, Bloomsbury has just released yet another novel about a brown-skinned female with a white cover girl on its facade: Joclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass. In her article “Publisher whitens another heroine of color” for Salon, Kate Harding examines Bloomsbury’s rationale for whitewashing multiple book covers, and also delves into a shadowed publishing industry saturated with those who are convinced that “white sells.”

Harding illuminates the thoughts of several activists and writers, and points to the fact that “white sells” is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. For our culture to show its support of ethnic diversity in the content we read and images we buy, explains Harding, we must pressure our librarians and booksellers to amp up stock on cover art that supports our multi-faceted population.

“To me folk music is about storytelling, and opera is about storytelling, so there’s no contradiction at all.” …more

Thirty years have passed since Joan Didion composed The White Album, her book of essays about the unsettling thrills and shadows of 1970’s LA, and by now the book’s title might as well refer to the hair color of its many personalities.  Didion herself is seventy-five, and the era she wrote about has been eclipsed by the roaring nineties and disaster crazed ‘aughts.

But much of her insight remains relevant, writes Josh-Garrett Davis. In his essay “California Über Alles” written for The Faster Times, he deems The White Album “almost a book of Genesis for the period of American history” he’s lived through. As Garrett-Davis reflects on his own bildungsroman in California, he comes to see Didion’s book as the creation story of a post-60’s world, a world fraught with uncertainty, detachment, and moral ambiguity.

The Rumpus presents the second installment of an index to “The Last Book I Loved” Series. …more

The decision by voters in several states to ban gay marriage has more than ruffled the feathers of many gay rights activists. In a country where half of all marriages end in divorce, many argue that the traditional marriage “protected” in measures such as California’s Proposition 8 has been marred by millions of broken vows.

John Marcotte, a web designer in Sacramento, has taken protest of Prop 8 one step further by proposing a measure for the 2010 California ballot that would ban divorce in California. “Since California has decided to protect traditional marriage, I think it would be hypocritical of us not to sacrifice some of our own rights to protect traditional marriage even more,” Marcotte told the Associated Press.

Marcotte, who runs the comedy site BadMouth.net, has garnered support from more than just the gay community. His Facebook page has over 11,000 members, and he led a “ban divorce” rally at the Capitol building in Sacramento. Some supporters held signs that read: “You too can vote to take away civil rights from someone.”

Find out more about Marcotte and his measure by reading the Associated Press article “‘No Divorce’ Initiative Lampoons Gay Marriage Ban” on the NPR website.

Kaylie Jones, daughter of James Jones who penned From Here to Eternity, revealed in an interview with The Daily Beast that her father was forced to remove gay sex scenes from his original manuscript prior to publication.

Jones had originally included discussions and details about sexual favors and relationships between male soldiers, which were deemed too “salacious” for the American public. …more

On October 21^st, Jack Kerouac had been dead exactly forty years.

You’d be pressed to find a more quoted, misunderstood, revered, and culturally significant icon of the latter half of the 20^th century. Yet his literary contributions remain pretty controversial. As Guardian writer David Barnett points out in “Misremembering Jack Kerouac”: “The evidence against Kerouac is, on the face of it, overwhelming. As joyful as his lyrical, stream-of-consciousness prose could be, it wasn’t, we are reminded, proper writing.” …more

Bibliophiles of the world, take note: if you are not an inhabitant of the Twin Cities, you could be missing a chance to put your literary acumen to practical use.

The literati of the “most literate city of 2008″ have banded together to create a literary scavenger hunt entitled Around the Literary Twin Cities in Almost Eighty Days, complete with lettered locales, limericks,  trivia, twists and turns, mystery clues, and loads of treasure for the patient and determine participants. …more

The author of a novel, who recommended it, how the cover is designed, and what awards it has won often sway readers into buying literature, but it’s not often that readers select books on the basis of who’s published them.  “Branding, the Future of Publishing?”, an article on Vroman’s Bookstore blog, examines the effect a publisher has on an author and his work.

While publishers may often be accused of stripping novels of their literary juice in favor of what sells, Vroman’s blogger Patrick makes a case for the importance of the publisher. He then goes on to propose that bookstores shelve by publisher rather than author-McSweeney’s and Featherproof earning their own shelves, as well as The New York Review Books Classics. While it may not be revolutionary, it’s certainly fascinating to think about.

Saying the word “journalism” these days is like openly inviting those around you to either deliver a lecture on the evils of technology, pontificate about the end of the written word, or expound on their emotional attachment to The New York Times.

Also on the list of hot journalism topics right now is the burgeoning number of nonprofit news organizations. Read Slate Magazine’s report on the new phenomenon, by Jack Schafer, and learn that San Francisco’s own Warren Hellman, founder of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, just committed $5 million to the Bay Area News Project and that MinnPost and Center for Independent Media, among others, are already up and running.

Schafer presents a bleak warning about such seemingly optimal publications: “For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose money deliberately. No matter how good the nonprofit operation is, it always ends up sustaining itself with handouts, and handouts come with conditions.” While for-profit publications strive to serve their consumer-driven readers, non-profit caters to cash-laden, and often do-gooder, donors who often have a lot of influence and agendas of their own to consider along with their funding.

At the beginning of Avenue Q, the Broadway Musical notorious for its puppets who say and do dirty things, the fresh-out-of-college Princeton glides onto the stage (as well as puppets can glide), assumes a singing position, and earnestly asks the audience: “What do I dooo with a B.A. in Engleeeeehsh?”

In his article for The American Scholar, “The Decline of the English Major,” William M. Chace observes how many students are wondering the very same thing. …more