The Written Nerd

Though I fear it has been too long in coming and will be a bit underwhelming, I'd like to try to articulate my own thoughts on the nature and evolution of book reviews: mainstream media, blogs, print, internet, etc. And it turns out living read girl' s Lady T (who ought to have a paying gig as a cultural critic) got there first. To put it in a nutshell, she writes It's like public school funding, the arts are the first ones to take the hit, while the football team gets their new uniforms. It's all about money to the corporations who run the newspaper/magazine industry,not quality vs. quantity. Essentially, we (that is, bloggers and professional book reviewers, the internet and the newspaper) are not each other's enemy. I mentioned some time ago the Wall Street Journal article which observed that publishers' allocation of advertising funds -- that is, spending money to get stacks of bestsellers front and center in chain stores, rather than on advertising in book...

Okay, this is the lazy girl's version of a Wednesday post. Below you'll find your comments and those of your fellow WN readers on reviews, in semi-abbreviated form, broken up by category: book industry, authors, and general readers (though of course there is some overlap). It's a bit long, but I thought it might be useful to see how people with different relationships to books are thinking about this issue. I'll have my thoughts on the issue on Friday. From the Book Industry: As a person who works in a bookstore, I find that a lot of customers still come in looking for a book that they read about in the Times (NPR being a close second in popularity.) Often, they don't remember the title or the author, so I try and read the Times book review so I can remember the name of the book based on their plot summary. (Noelle) Hi, I work in the bookselling industry so a lot of the books that I end up reading are just books which I've stumbled across while receiving book...

I can't wait until all my fellow booksellers converge on Brooklyn for BEA starting May 30! You may have noticed my major passions are books and Brooklyn, and I'm giddy with excitement as the two get lots of attention this season. Bookselling This Week has Brooklyn restaurant recommendations from local writer Pat Willard. I have a special soft spot for Convivium, which is where the ALP proposed, and 5th Avenue in Park Slope is becoming a real foodie's paradise -- in addition to Pat's choices, I'd also highly recommend Bogota for exciting Latin American food, and Biscuit for mouth-watering barbecue. But Smith Street is even closer to Hotel ABA , and you can't miss with the strip's array of restaurants. I love Bar Tabac for the sweet Gypsy jazz often being played by a live band, as well as for their juicy burgers, and have to add to Willard's list my favorite pan-Asian restaurant Faan -- the ALP and I love ordering a couple of sushi rolls, some Pad T...

I've been thrilled and intrigued by the answers to my questions about where you read reviews, and why . I want to keep the question open for a couple of days longer to get some more feedback and refine my thoughts on the subject. Look for a synthesis of your responses and my thoughts on the matter by Wednesday, and in the meantime, if you haven't responded I'd love to hear from you . (It's the end of Fundraising Drive Week at WNYC, which I listen to every morning, so forgive me if I sound like I'm soliciting pledges...) Instead, today I want to point out joyfully two major articles about independent bookstores that are NOT playing the same, sad "too bad independent bookstores are doomed" tune. Thanks to Shelf Awareness for the link to these two: The Colorado Springs Business Journal allows as how there are fewer indie bookstores in Colorado Springs than there used to be, but demonstrates that those that remain are growing and thriving because they have ad...

In case you don't read any blogs but mine, let me first clumsily sketch the current issues raging in the blogosphere at the moment, and in the world of book culture at large. The National Book Critics Circle has launched a campaign to preserve newspaper book review sections, beginning with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which recently fired its full-time book section editor. You can read their reasons and their strategies here on the NBCC blog, Critical Mass . Some periodicals (like the New York Times ) and many bloggers, have picked up the story and interpreted it in terms of the rise of literary blogs. Some opinions (with which I risk offending someone even by summarizing): - book reviews are suffering because blogs are cheaper and easier to produce. - blogs represent contemporary, passionate criticism, while mainstream media reviews have gotten staid, elitist, boring, or irrelevant. - professional reviewers represent an educated opinion on books, while bloggers are often a...

Back in blogland again, after a great weekend of eating, drinking and dancing, like you oughta. Still recovering a bit, but I've managed to pull together a link or two. But not many, because I'm sleepy. Michelle of The Inkwell Bookstore in Falmouth, Mass, suggests that indie booksellers tend to be obsessed with bookcovers -- she sites her store's link to Book By Its Cover , a blog by a designer here in Brooklyn whose posts are mostly just pictures of beautiful book images. Beware -- it's strangely addicting... Thanks, Michelle! The discussion of Alan De Niro's Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead at the Litblog Co-Op has spilled over into this week -- there's a lot going on in those stories, so you've got time to read more. Speaking of the LBC, I want to send a signed book and publicity poster for Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die! to contest winner Ed Vick, but I can't seem to get ahold of him by email. Anyone know him, tell him to email me with...

Dude, I totally flaked on posting yesterday, didn't I? Well, I was working in the Book Nerd cause -- attending a special session at the fabulous Brooklyn Public Library on starting a small business. Look out for more on that here in future. But I'm hoping all that good info for the future bookstore can marinate in my head and my notebook for a while, because I'm having a hard time concentrating for long on anything but marrying the ALP in June, and all that that implies in the meantime. He's headed out of town this weekend for some mysterious bachelor activity, while I've got my college girlfriends coming in to town for esoteric girl stuff (like champagne and dancing). So you probably won't hear from me tomorrow either... too much to do. I'll be back next week, though. There's still BEA and Emerging Leaders to keep me in the book world. And the Litblog Co-Op is still going strong with READ THIS!, focusing on Alan De Niro's Skinny Dipping in ...