Category: Books

Did you miss Paris Hilton’s book proposal? Shame on you (via Readerville).

“On the ponds where the swans were, Louis put his trumpet away. The cygnets crept under their mother’s wings. Darkness settled on the woods and fields and marsh. A loon called its wild night cry. As Louis relaxed and prepared for sleep, all his thoughts were of how lucky he was to inhabit such a beautiful earth, how lucky he had been to solve his probles with music, and how pleasant it was to look forward to another night of sleep and another day tomorrow, and the fresh morning, and the light that returns with the day.”

—The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White

There’s been a great discussion over at Readerville over this article which refers to a seeming gender bias in the New York Times Book Review. It claims that, according to a fairly rigorous survey, the percentage of books the Times reviews and the sex of the reviews skews overwhelmingly male. Extrapolate this and quickly run into some mingling contradictions. Acquisitions editors at major publishing houses (i.e. the people who buy book projects) are a majority female as are marketers and publicists. CEOs and COOs (the people holding the purse strings) are majority male. The winners of pretigious book awards like the Pultizer, the National Book Award and the Nobel are mostly male. 70% of book buyers in the United States are female.

I certainly don’t have an answer to these disparities. I think they are much more complicated than traditional gender bias and sexism. But I think as readers and book buyers, most of us are complicit in a kind of personal ghettoization that unwittingly lets this inequity fester. I ask this then: How many of us make a concerted effort to read and buy books by authors of genderd different than ours? How many of us are in dual gender writing and book groups? Perhaps equal representation begins at home.

I get asked this a lot. This is my first attempt to set it down in digital soil.

I’ve compiled a list of Ten Books I’m Glad I Read in 2003. Perhaps if you are flush with holiday funds (er, right) and looking for something to read?

Happy New Year everbody!

I have a thing or two to say about Stephen Ambrose. But it’s taking me awhile.

The 5th night of Chanukah in my family was always Book Night. Suzan, being very knowing, got me a guidebook of Northern California.

She’s quite a girl.

Jonathan Franzen, whose novel The Corrections is Oprah’s Pick this month has been uninvited from the show, after making some nasty remarks about O and her brethren. I think they’re both acting like children.

Let’s just admit we judge a book by its cover.