I’ll be buying this book (Amazon link), not because I really want to read a Vietnam War novel, but because I want to reward an author who takes editing as seriously as it should be taken: This is one of the great works of fiction about that war, or any war, and it emerged from …
Books
Open Thread: A Million Little (Would-Be) Madoffs
Tales from the Days of a Dying empire, part 1,426,000: Tom Scocca at Slate explained that “James Frey Is A Jedi Knight of Bullshit”, pointing to an article in New York Magazine. Frey, whose eventual obituary will be headlined with some variant on “Writer Who Was Legally Required to Apologize to Oprah On-Air for Lying”, …
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Bush’s New Book “Decision Points” Isn’t So Much “New” as it is “Plagiarized”
Dubya is a LIYAH, and his pants are on FIYAH! If you haven’t heard because you’ve been trapped under something heavy or whatever, Bush is back! And I’m not talking about the death of the Brazilian wax, either. I’m talking about the butthole who turned this country into a right mess, and then peaced out, …
Bush’s New Book “Decision Points” Isn’t So Much “New” as it is “Plagiarized”Post + Comments (57)
PSA: Griftopia
As you probably know, Matt Taibbi has a new book out, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America. Within it, Taibbi moves from his established gig reporting on the weirdness that is modern American poltical campaigning… … Being in the building with Palin that night [of her acceptance speech …
Reading the Future of Reading
Brian Barrett at Gizmodo wants to be taken “… To A Future Where Books Act Like This“: The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo. Thankfully, I am far too old and obsolete to be the target market, because that second Big Idea, Coupland (“making it easier to determine key reading materials based on …
Early Morning Open Thread: Twain in His Own Words, At Last
One of the dozen or so books that forged my understanding of the world and literature was Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, which I first read when I was eight or nine. Apart from Huckleberry Finn and possibly Puddinhead Wilson, I’ve always thought Twain’s “journalism” (commentary, essays) better than his fiction, so I’m really …
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Late Night Open Thread: What Are You Reading?
TattooSydney suggested that it’s been a while since the last BJ Virtual Book Club… The older I get, the slower I read — don’t know how much of this is natural attrition, and how much is the increasing influence of the intertoobz on my attention span. But I’m having a great time gradually working my …
Late Night Open Thread: What Are You Reading?Post + Comments (124)