Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup

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I’m hoping to God that it’s just temporary, but for whatever reason, the book blogs are suddenly all worried about ethics, whether it’s what to do about reading writers with objectionable opinions or whether writers should base characters on people they know. Some of their thoughts below:

Over at TOR, a discussion on what to do with great books by evil writers.

Conversational Reading doesn’t like A.S. Byatt’s thoughts on “put(ting) people into stories.”

Speaking of ethical problems, here’s another reason to dislike Amazon. This time, it’s the way they do their best-seller lists (via Powell’s).

Aditya Sudarshan at The Hindu asks, “Why is it that we are willing to grant young writers ‘potential’ but not ‘insight’?” Good question. (via The Book Bench)

And in one of those rare victories for the side of good, that “whitewashed” cover of Liar by Justine Larbalestier has been discontinued. The book will now have a cover featuring an African-American girl.

In other news, Nick Cave will sing his new book (and my crush on him will soon become unsafe for both of us), a look inside the homes of science fiction writers (via Bookninja), Courtney Queeney on being a woman poet, and George Saunders first short story goes online (via The Elegant Variation).

Seth Fischer’s writing has twice been listed as notable in The Best American Essays and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize by several publications, including Guernica. He was the founding Sunday editor at The Rumpus and is the current nonfiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown. He is a Dornsife PhD Fellow at USC and been awarded fellowships and residencies by Ucross, Lambda Literary, Jentel, Ragdale, and elsewhere, and he teaches at the UCLA-Extension Writer’s Program and Antioch University, where he received his MFA. More from this author →