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Andrew Wylie is arguably one of the three most influential literary agents in the business. And he prefers to keep a low profile so you ain’t gonna see him popping up on a panel at the Serial Killer Romance Writers of Greater Tupelo Mississippi Area Book Conference anytime soon. However, he did grant a rare interview to French media [...]

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  The folks at The Book Standard have launched a blog dedicated to literary videos, Book Trailerpark. Looks like the blog will have lots of cool stuff and discussion. Just remember, in the event of a funnel cloud, drop all your books, close your video clips, and “leave the trailer park and take cover on low-protected [...]

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  William Kennedy provides a big review of Cormac McCarthy’s new novel, The Road, in Sunday’s New York Times. I really enjoyed the novel, especially when I was on the verge of not enjoying the novel. Let me explain. As the NYT review explains, the novel is about a father and son’s lengthy trek to the coast in [...]

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A reader in Washington claimed the free Salinger books. Thanks to everyone who emailed me. Hope you all have a great weekend!

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I’m at risk of my bookshelves falling through the floor, so I’m back to cleaning out the collection somewhat. One of my book collecting strategies is to keep first editions, hardbacks, and other things that are difficult to find. And to thin out the collection, I tend to get rid of classic, but inexpensive, paperbacks that [...]

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There’s that scene in Rocky III when the Italian Stallion hangs a photo of Clubber Lang. Every morning and every night, Rocky stares into the mirror and sees his enemy looking back at him. Now, you might not ever reach a triumphant moment on the literary beach, when you out-pace your teacher, and you might [...]

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  Variety reported that the film rights to Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game were won by Twentieth Century Fox in “in a heated bidding war that pushed the price past seven figures.” Although Lewis’s previous best seller Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game dealt with baseball, his newest book looks at college [...]

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  As dumbed-down as most of our newspapers are these days, it’s difficult to imagine that some reader in the future will be confused by the complexity of our editorials. But maybe they will. In the wonderful Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing, Elizabeth Mitchell quotes a 1916 editorial [...]

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  Maud Newton and Lauren Cerand point out that Marisha Pessl, author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics will appear tonight at Mo Pitkin’s in New York as part of The Reader’s Room reading series. The event starts at 7pm and also features Lorin Stein, who translated Gregoire Bouiller’s book The Mystery Guest: An Account. Should be a [...]

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On a more serious note…  Besides being one of our most accomplished noir writers, besides being a single-minded force striving for the protection of our children, Andrew Vachss is also a visionary. Not in some mystical, magical way. But in a forward-scout or telescopic way. Quite simply, he sees things before you and I do. In 1986, [...]

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  I seem to recall a radio interview with Hootie and the Blowfish years ago. The boys talked about hitting the big time and all the usual stuff. But the one thing that stuck in my mind was how they claimed to have declined a massive advance in favor of a more modest one. Although [...]

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