A Mom’s Guide To Turning Out
Gawker comments on a Star magazine interview with Dina Lohan. It seems the mother of Lindsay Lohan, that teen actress with the 45-year-chain-smokers rasp, is writing a book to help parents “to manage and how this all happened. It’s about avoiding pitfalls,” with showbiz kids. The elder Lohan tells the Star that “I get so much…
continue readingReview: Going Postal
My review of Mark Ames’ Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond is available on PopMatters today. Ames examines workplace and school massacres by looking at the environments that spawned the tragedies. This is a grueling book to read. For example, there is a section on CEO greed that will…
continue readingThe Value of Indepent Bookstores
From the always-informative Bookslut, I learned about Tyler Cowan’s article on Slate about the value of independent bookstores. In What Are Independent Bookstores Really Good For? Not Much, Cowan argues that “Our attachment to independent bookshops is, in part, affectation—a self-conscious desire to belong a particular community (or to seem to). Patronizing indies helps us think…
continue readingCountdown to BEA
The days are ticking down until me and the Slushpile.net posse rock da hizouse at Book Expo America. The nation’s largest publishing event, BEA attracts over 2,000 exhibits and publishers. I’ll be at the convention on Friday, so it might be a quiet day for my humble book blog. Hopefully, I’ll be able to catch up during…
continue readingDa Vinci Code’s Secret of Success
Arthur Spiegelman explains how, despite being ravaged by the critics, The Da Vinci Code became one of the best-selling novels of all time. Nick Owchar, deputy editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review says that “my theory is that non-fiction sells better than fiction and this book has a heavy concentration of history and purported facts…
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