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From Stephen Elliott
Joe Queenan reads books. Lots of books.
In fact, he surrounds himself with them (1,340 lay about his house to be exact). Queenan reads at least four hours a day every day, and although he is admittedly a slow reader, he has still managed to read 6,128 books in the last 55 years.
...moreTom Lutz’s recent essay for the LA Review of Books discusses the missing generation of journalists, the layoffs that have forced out some of the greatest book reviewers from their staff positions on newspaper mastheads and the diminishing of the book review from newspapers at large.
...more“The book review page is an odd cultural territory, often inhabited by such hybrid creatures — unlike their contemporaries in other disciplines, where the lines between critic and artist are more pronounced.”
All readers are book critics, but disseminating literary opinions to the masses is only part of the job description for some of us.
...moreMacy Halford writes on the book review, and our inclinations towards immersing ourselves in the opinions of our friends and trusted personalities.
But alas, we can’t really know someone through their book recommendations, and this shouldn’t impede our ability to appreciate them.
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The Instructions is this month’s Rumpus Book Club selection. Published by McSweeney’s the book is 1,024 pages. John Brown was probably the first member of the book club to finish it.
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This week The Rumpus brings you essays, an interview, a blurb and a review or two from good people like Michelle Orange and Josh Bearman and other special luminaries.
Maybe because I’m one-quarter Belgian, or so my parents claim, I tend to go out of my way to discover famous Belgians. I’m half-kidding about that but I do admit there was a brief, embarrassing period when I claimed to have Belgian Gypsy blood just like that famous jazz guitar player Django Reinhardt who was in fact a real Belgian Gypsy. But as far as famous Belgian writers go, I haven’t read many, at least not until earlier this year when I discovered the amazing novelist Georges Simenon.
Now that it’s finally Sunday, it’s time to read a new book. Perhaps you’ve noticed how Sunday parks and bars are full of blissed-out readers and lovers of the written word? Please take a hint.
...moreFrom Powell’s, a review: “If you can use the Net for anything, then you can use it for anything — including spam, denial-of-service attacks and computer break-ins carried out by spoofing IP addresses or poisoning domain-name server caches, all of which are enabled by the simplicity of the Internet’s core architecture.” …read more