Tina Brown is back with The Daily Beast, a website that she says is "a speedy, smart edit of the web from the merciless point of view of what interests the editors." 

Essentially, it's what my younger Mini Maven has been learning in fifth-grade language arts as "idea mapping" combined with hotlinks and images. I took a look because this week's "Big Fat Story" is about the Nobel Prize laureate for Literature, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (forgive the lack of accent aigue; this blogging tool isn't the nimblest). 

What I found was a sort of AOL Welcome Screen for the media set: links out to stories around the web that might interest a specific demographic -- even complete with links to ads and commerce opportunities, whic...Read More

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Like many avid readers, I sometimes daydream about what my perfect home library would look like: Here, the inscribed first editions; here, my cherished childhood books. But yesterday via Gawker I saw photos of a home library so awesome that it actually gave me nightdreams about putting together my perfect library. Instead of Manderley, last night I dreamt I was walking through a house in which bookshelves were the main feature of every room, and each shelf or case was filled with my favo...Read More

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I'm in the middle of a project that requires a lot of reading. I love the subject, but it's getting in the way of all of my other reading. Grrrr. When will I get to the new Haneif Kureishi? The Dennis Lehane? What about the Twelve galley I just received that looks really good? 

It's making me downright cranky. 

My recourse will be to carve out some reading time this weekend so that I can pick up the Lehane. That should at least return my temper to its sweet, even self (I can hear Mr. Bethanne laughing already). 

What about you? Do you get cranky when your reading time is limited? What do you do to get back to good?

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Yes, folks, it's time again for that seat-of-your-pants contest, Page-Burner! Regular contestants know that I can be a bit (OK, a lot) slow sending out the prizes, but I do send them out...so let the guesses begin! The first correct guess wins a grab-bag of five new and unread hardcovers; I'll post later today to let the winner know that he or she needs to send me an email with his or her snailmail addy.

Which book is currently keeping me up too late? Is it:

-- Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello, an incredibly readable history ? 

OR

-- Allison Winn Scotch's Time of My Life, released today and already...Read More

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You can be forgiven if you didn't notice the following news from Little, Brown:

...Read More

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...Banned Book. Mine was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which after all these years is still Number Five on the ...Read More

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This is sad, bad news for all readers in DC and for all authors who tour here: ...Read More

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Yesterday was a tough one on Wall Street, not to mention on Capitol Hill. I have one friend threatening to slit open his mattress and another one considering real estate abroad. We're all nervous. 

I find two things helpful in times of anxiety: common sense, and laughter. It just so happens that I'd recently been introduced to two quite different authors who represent those things and who also share a similar background. I decided to have one read the other and see what happened. It didn't hurt that the author I interviewed is also a levelheaded personal finance pundit and that the author whose book she read is very humorous.

...Read More

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Cellphone novels: They're not just for harajuku girls anymore, at least not if Jakucho Setouchi has anything to say about it. The 86-year-old Buddhist nun and acclaimed writer (her translation of the medieval epic The Tale of Genji is renowned) has just released her first novel for the tiny screen. Tomorrow's Rainbow, according to this Reuters article, is "about a high-school girl who is deeply hurt by her parents' divorce, but finds the love of her life in a boy named Hikaru."

There are several things about this story (via Gawker) that I love, but my favorite is how Setouchi (who says she "doesn't want to write any more mobile novels") uses elements from Genji in h...Read More

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with Annette Gordon-Reed, who is on tour for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. This meticulously researched history of the black, slave Hemings family and how it intertwined with the white, landowning Jefferson family is almost hypnotic in its fisheye-lens approach: You "see" closeup details about the 18th and 19th century lives described at the same time you "see" what was happening around each indi...Read More

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Thanks to all who left comments on Monday's post in which I questioned the organizing principle of Jezebel's post that challenged Esquire's Top 75 Books Every Man Should Read list. As I said, keep those picks coming. Even if this blog doesn't get the traffic Jezebel does, I'd like to compile a list of reader recs for women and post in to their latest entry. I still maintain that that original list...Read More

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The "required reading" list in question comes from this Jezebel post, which in its turn refers back to the Esquire 75 Books Every Man Should Read (psssst, Esky; I've read 40 of them). Jez's Jessica called this list "myopic" and cavilled at the notion of Bukowski's Women being on the list: "The ...Read More

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