Editors, publishers and critics have their own industry-specific lexicon.

People in the industry are used to hearing words like “acclaimed” or saying that a book “brilliantly defies categorization,” but apparently this is only the surface level of description. Beyond the commonly used adjectives and phrases, there lies the truth—what they actually mean, decoded.

Jonathan Lethem has been hired for David Foster Wallace’s old teaching post at Pomona. (via @maudnewton)

“Lots of people in Indiana Jones hats today. I approve.” From @WriterDaniel at this Twitter roundup from the LA Times Festival of Books.

GIANT’s got a pretty good summary of what different kinds of editors really do. Thankfully, they forgot to make fun of Sunday Editors.

The NYPL has a really cool looking book-sorting machine. (via Bookninja)

A “subtle,” “brilliant” and “ambitious” post on cliches.

I don’t really care all that much that Danielle Steel’s assistant is going to jail for stealing $750,000, but the fact that Steel barely noticed the money was gone (and seems to like to brag about that) makes me want to break something. Or start writing romance novels. One of the two.

In the 1960s and 70s, Central and South America were rife with dictatorships which used secret police, the military, right-wing death squads and tight control of the media to quash dissent and keep power. One of the most egregious of these police states was Argentina, still recovering from its anti-democratic Peronist era. In that nation, the right-wing government was explicitly anti-Communist and anti-Semetic. Thousands of people disappeared, thousands more were exiled, thousands more imprisoned and tortured.

If you’re under 40, you may not have much awareness of this history, unless you’ve seen the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman (from the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig) or read the seminal account Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number by Jacobo Timerman. …more

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)

…more