Books in the News

Okay, I admit I like the Guardian Books Blog. I just hope the bloggish articles don't come to take the place of their regular books articles. On writing that first novel: "For years I was bogged down in the paraphernalia surrounding the writing of a novel--the specially sharpened pencil, the new notebook, just the right word processor. I eagerly hovered up snippets of information about how other people wrote their books as if hoping to discover a special secret that would enable me to write mine. With hindsight it is now clear that this hopelessly naive behaviour was a form of decades-long displacement activity that was actually preventing me from writing a novel, and that the only way to write a novel is indeed to write it, one painful word after another." On giving children books for Christmas. On what reviewers should think according to publishers. Outside of the blog, on Penguins: you know, I don't know if I like Penguin books because I like penguins, or if I like penguins because of the books. Alice Munro in The Guardian and in The Globe. Plath sonnet discovered.

Am devastated about Reese and Ryan.