Monthly Archives: September 2013

The Big Idea: Adam Mansbach

The spaces between things have a name — and they have a hold on author Adam Mansbach. He’s here to explain why and how, and what it means for his newest book, the novel The Dead Run. ADAM MANSBACH: One of the smartest people in the publishing game is a guy named Chris Jackson. He […]

Read More

The Big Idea: Steven Brust and Skyler White

  Disclosure: I liked The Incrementalists, the new novel by Steven Brust and Skyler White, enough to blurb it (specifically, the blurb says “Secret societies, immortality, murder mysteries and Las Vegas all in one book? Shut up and take my money.”); it also received a coveted starred review from Booklist, which said “Call it genius at work.” […]

Read More

Why I Don’t Comment on Everything

As most of you know, I comment here not infrequently about social and political issues, and from time to time I even make stands on things, a good recent example of this being my convention harassment policy pledge. As a result, people will often send me (via e-mail and social media) updates on social/political things […]

Read More

The Value of Negative Reviews

Over at Metafilter they’re talking about this New Yorker article, in which book critic Lee Siegel explains why he doesn’t want to write negative book reviews anymore (here’s the MF thread). I posted my thoughts on the matter there, but it’s worth posting them here too. Here’s what I said. — I was a professional […]

Read More

The Big Idea: Brandon Sanderson

Don’t know if you’ve heard of this Brandon Sanderson kid, but something tells me one day he’s gonna hit the heights. He’s got a new book out called Steelheart, and he’s here today to talk about. And also to talk about being a geek. And how the latter matters to the former. Watch for this […]

Read More

The Big Idea: V.E. Schwab

In explaining the Big Idea behind her latest novel Vicious, V.E. Schwab notes that the elements (and even characters) that you think are important when you begin the novel are not always the elements that are important when you finish the novel — the writing of the novel itself reveals what’s interesting about the world […]

Read More

Popular Science Kills Online Comments

Because they’ve discovered that trolls and jackasses in comment threads actively work against people taking science seriously. Per this earlier discussion of comments, I think Popular Science is probably doing the right thing. The site doesn’t benefit from hosting dis-and-misinformers, and such folks are becoming more persistent and possibly more organized. Best to punt them […]

Read More

Hey! Have an Open Promotional Thread!

I’m writing things not on the Internet today, so while I’m doing that, I’m opening up this comment thread for you to tell everyone about what you think is cool and worth checking out, online or off. Could be a Web site, could be new music, could be a book or story or some crafty […]

Read More

A Reminder Regarding Off-Topic Comments

Which is: When you have the urge to post a comment that is off-topic to the conversational thread, don’t. Per the comment policy, I will likely delete it or at the very least sigh exasperatedly and be very cross. You don’t want me to be very cross at you. Because then I get like this. […]

Read More

Boehner’s Primary Challenger

Many of you know that I live in Speaker of the House John Boehner’s congressional district of OH-8, and that Boehner’s got the seat probably for as long as he wants it — he’s been in it for 22 years, and it’s been held by a Republican since 1939. But it may interest political junkies […]

Read More

%d bloggers like this: