The book blogs had a great week — here’s some of what they have to say:

This is very cool. Check out The Underground Library, a community in which “books are given out to Members of the Library, who are asked to SIGN their name by the Due Date and PASS the book to someone who they think will like it..” (via)

Hemingway, Churchill fail computerized essay grading system. (via)

“Eschscholtzias” reads like a railway accident of its own – a fatal collision between Latin and German.” On “fossil poetry.” (via)

HTMLGiant’s got a great video on Raymond Carver.

“Who needs an agent? You do.”

“(J.G. Ballard) didn’t believe that human actions were rational or easily fathomable, and it was probably this, more than any view of history or aesthetic theory, that led him away from what he regarded as the staleness and artificiality of contemporary literature.” (via)

by Joshua Mohr

Lately people have been asking me why I decided to publish my novel, Some Things that Meant the World to Me, with a small press. Instinctively, my gut wants to lie, stammer some kind of self-justification: “Well, uh, I felt that a boutique house (note that I didn’t say “small press”) would give me more attention (i.e. answer my emails) and nurture the book in a way true to my artistic vision (i.e. not perform fellatio on the marketing department)

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The future of book reviewing is online.

I say this not as a cheerleader for all things hi-tech (hell, I don’t even own an iPod), nor as some prophet of the post-physical book, but because the model of book reviewing we’re used to – delivered by the priestly class of critics; limited by paper, ink, column inches; determined by the latest microtrend and by who an author’s agent had lunch with – is clearly history. …more