Square Books Named PW Bookseller of the Year
During my time in graduate school at the University of Mississippi, I was lucky enough to work at Square Books in Oxford. So I was particularly pleased to see the news today that Publishers Weekly named the store as Bookseller of the Year. Check out the full article here. Congratulations to all the gang down…
continue readingWill Finishing a Book Change Your Life?
GalleyCat referenced an interesting post by Arthur McMahon in which he expresses a bit of amazement at the fact that “Completing a novel didn’t change my perception of life like I expected it to.” Some commenters at GalleyCat claimed they didn’t expect completing a novel would have any change, they write for themselves, not riches…
continue readingA Laugh at Lousy Book Covers
A reader passed along this Tumblr account, dedicated to Lousy Book Covers. Now, obviously, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that, so yeah, maybe this one shouldn’t be included or that one isn’t that bad or whatever. But it’s at least a pretty humorous gaze through the results of ten minutes…
continue readingFamed Faulkner Biographer Dies at 89
When I was in graduate school at the University of Mississippi, noted William Faulkner biographer Joseph Blotner visited campus. I met him in Square Books, the well-known independent bookstore where I worked at the time. I was heavily into Faulkner, stacking up class upon class, filling my transcript with as many Faulkner courses as possible.…
continue readingReviews that Say Nothing
A while ago, there was an uproar of discussion regarding the nature of book reviews and whether the critic should be, in the most simplistic way of speaking, “nice” or not. Quite a bit of the conversation centered on William Giraldi’s self-congratulatory, excessively assholish, show offy, “Let’s see how many references and allusions I can…
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