āIt so happens that I have been ganged up on online, and I have also been beaten up by actual gangs of men on the street,ā writes ancestral Gawker editor Choire Sicha in the New York Times Book Review, locating the true shame in Jon Ronsonās So Youāve Been Publicly Shamed.
Read a Book
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty. Belknap Press, 685 pp. Tastes like dry paper.
Leave Easter Eggs Out of My Books, Please
Marisha Pessl's new 600-page thriller Night Film centers on a fictional recluse named Stanislas Cordova, who made films so horrifically, soul-destroyingly evil they were effectively banned in the U.S. When his beautiful young daughter mysteriously dies, an investigative journalist becomes infected with the need toā¦
Is Anything in This New York Times Review of That D.C. Book True?
The New York Times supplied a copy of Mark Leibovich's obsessively anticipated study of Washington self-obsession, This Town, to onetime Boston Globe Washington bureau chief David Shribmanāwho now does something or other in Pennsylvania or maybe Ohio?āand the paper was rewarded with a book review that begins like this:
Zoƫ Heller Wrote The Best Hatchet Job of 2012 Yesterday
A thorough, deliberate hatchet job is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It is for this reason no one could remove their eyes from Pete Well's review of Guy's American Kitchen & Bar last month; it is for this reason that Adam Mars-Jones was given an award by newly-minted Hatchet Job of the Year for dismantlingā¦
Maybe Former New York Times Editors Should Not Write For the NYT
There's a hidden curse to being a current or former top editor at the New York Times. Yes, you've held one of the most powerful positions in journalism. But who is going to edit you? Nobody, not very stringently, at least. So we find that when current or former NYT editors engage in writing for their paper, it oftenā¦
The News About Jonah Lehrer Has Not Reached Fauxhemian Brooklyn
A couple of weeks ago, hot shot New Yorker wonderboy Jonah Lehrer was forced to resign after he was revealed to have fabricated Bob Dylan quotes in his book Imagine. Remember that? Yeah. It was in all the newspapers and websites and radio stations and whatnot. The only place the news did not reach: deepest, coolest,ā¦
'My Arthritis Flared Up Reading About the Sexual Gymnastics': Old Man Reviews Fifty Shades of Grey
In light of the "hullabaloo" surrounding BDSM novel Fifty Shades of Grey, elderly Smithtown, New York resident David Shobin gave the lusty lady book a read. Afterwards, he penned a powerfully ambivalent Amazon book review that has since been quoted in The Los Angeles Times and Vanity Fair. (Both publications quotedā¦
Malcolm X Still Able to Cause Minor Media Uproar
In your finally Friday media column: Malcolm X's newest media controversy, Vegan mag in meaty photo flap, Anderson Cooper has a nice room, tabloid phone-hacking scandal updates, Graydon Carter's in the movies, and Bob Woodward creeps towards old codger territory.
How to Review a Book Without Reading It
The Onion's A.V. Club has forthrightly apologized after discovering that one of their writers wrote a review of a book without reading it. Because it hadn't been published yet. How'd the writer manage to fool his editors? Watch and learn.
Wall Street Journal Starting a Book Review Section
The Wall Street Journal is really taking this "anything the New York Times does we can do better" fantasy very seriously! The latest shot across the NYT's bow: a WSJ book review section. Is the world ready for that?
Shoplifting From The Place Where Brain Cells Come From
Tao Lin's Guardian book review. Related: Going to hospital, back at 3. Brain: exploded.
Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol is Just The DaVinci Code in Washington D.C.
Or so goes Janet Maslin's New York Times review of Dan Brown's new book. Maslin's take, and my own, after the jump.
Will Video Blogs Replace Book Reviews?
Why not. YouTube will determine the next president and whether we bomb Iran, it might as well shrink James Wood's column inches in the New Yorker. I'm already experiencing the anxiety of a certain kind of influence in watching this ebullient young critic analyze Tom Rob Smith's Child 44. Future belletrists, takeā¦
