Miscellanea
May 18, 2008

I have been reading a number of book-related articles this week that have nothing in common with each other but the fact that they are, in my, opinion, extremely interesting. So I thought I would share a few of them with you.

How would you like a new dictionary with no definitions but with a $2,600 price tag (and that’s the cheapest edition)? You might; it’s a beauty!

The normally quiet world of newspaper book reviewing received some publicity last year in what has been called the Great Book Review Panic of 2007. It happened when the respected Atlanta Journal-Constitution eliminated its book review editor, but the protest roused barely any interest in the book-reading public. Now, comes an idea for book reviewing that might have potential.

The increasing answer to the diminishing space for reviews at newspapers is online book review sites. Writer David Milofsky notes in his article, “Online reviewing boosts unsung authors,” that “while the quality of reviewers in newspapers varies widely, most who review regularly and are paid for their work reach a much higher level of professionalism that the run of online reviewers. But that's likely to change over time.”

Some words sound … just perfect for their meaning or as Joseph Bottum puts it, “They taste good in the mouth, and they seem to resound with their own verbal truthfulness.” What could be better or more fun to use than these “Agenbites”?

This week . . . 
Lolita is one of my favorite books. And I recently came across this You Tube video which is an interview with Vladimir Nabokov talking about the book. It is divided into and , though they are a continuation of the same televised interview that seems to have taken place shortly after Putnam released the American edition in 1958. Even if you are not a fan of the novel, the too-short interview is interesting for what it shows us about Nabokov’s ideas about the novel and the reactions it provoked.

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren

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