Too much going on today (and yesterday and the day before) and I need to gather my wits, my thoughts, my plot lines. Stories have been writing themselves in my head and I've not yet gotten them down on paper. A problem. I must eschew all blogging until they get out of me and onto the page.
For now, a few links to guide you to the afternoon:
- I'm thrilled to see that Jacket Copy, the LA Times book blog, is updated almost daily now. Is it my constant complaining that has finally won them over? Tony's recent employment? The "leaked" memo about a real focus on blog numbers? Or D, all of the above?
- I'm love, love, loving the 2007 Year in Reading at The Millions. I want to play next year.
- The LBC Read This! business kicks-off with Dan Wickett's review of The Farther Shore by Matthew Eck.
- I was sick this weekend and missed the Raymond Chandler tour of LA - but I didn't miss this morning's NYRB review (via Powell's) of Judith Freeman's The Long Embrace. Seems I'm not the only one who didn't swoon: "The Long Embrace is a restless hallucination of a book about a woman obsessed by a mystery that she knows she will never solve -- and perhaps does not wish to solve." It's a long review. Looonnnng.
- The Bat got a make-over and I dig it. I also like seeing Mr. Champion in his podcasting gear. I've always wondered: how does the writer's voice come across so clearly whereas in my interviews all you hear are coffee mugs clinking around and silverware scraping plates. How does his voice sound so distinct and clear from theirs? Ah, they each have their own micorophone. With a royal blue ambient noise-reducing cover. I will wonder no more.
- It seems The Golden Compass will make it onto my LAist series: When Your Favorite Novel Becomes a Terrible Movie. Other novels-to-films that I expect are awful and am afraid to go see: Love in the Time of Cholera & Atonement.
- Antoine Wilson offers up his picks for books to give this holiday season and shames me in the process as I've heard of neither (neither!) book. Must. Add. To. List.
- I'm working on a kindle piece for LAist and I feel like pulling my hair out.
- What doesn't make me want to pull my hair out: Didion's prose. I just finished (for the third go-round) Play It as It Lays and I am still in the depressive fog of Maria Wyeth and her strung-out existence. However, I can't stop playing the quintessential Didion line over and over in my head: "I never expected you to fall back on style as an argument." And then:
"I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.
Why, BZ would say.
Why not, I say."
