Bookselling This Week announces the November 2004 Book Sense Picks. Among the picks: Amanda Eyre Ward's How to Be Lost, Russell Banks' The Darling, Margot Livesey's Banishing Verona: A Novel, Stephen Mitchell's new translation of Gilgamesh, and Mark Helprin's The Pacific and Other Stories. (See the September 2004 Picks here.)

• ABC News reports, "More Authors Keeping Online Journals." (Related reading: Stephany's post re: Robert Olen Butler's quotes in ABC News' article.)
• The London News Review's Book Diary presents "round one of 'Judging the Booker by its covers.'"
• Pitney Bowes auctions off celebrity-designed envelopes to raise funds for literacy charities. (Participating celebrities include Sharon Stone, Halle Berry, and Brittany Murphy -- whose envelope looks familiar, though I can't remember which edition of the DSM I first saw it in.) (First link via Booksquare.)
• The Old Hag's Lizzie, briefly returned to us, offers up advice: "Nonfiction authors, take note: being a famous author and well-regarded authority on death and dying will not stop you from mistakenly having sex with a man in a turban named Escondido." (Read the full post to make sense of that.)

Much of the last half of the current Book Babes column, "Blogging for Books," relies on blogger Mark Sarvas' insider perspective. "Publicists and editors are increasingly aware of blogs and have begun courting us rather aggressively to review their work," Sarvas tells the Babes. "I think there's a sense that a small house (that) has no hope of getting into the NYTBR (for whatever that may be worth these days -- there are different schools of thought on this point) might find a sympathetic blogger, and that's how word of mouth builds up."

Several book blogs (whose antagonistic relations with the Book Babes were chronicled in GC's previous post, "Book Babel") have already posted long responses to the column, but the response GC found most interesting addresses Mark's quotes directly.

From The Literary Saloon:

Many [publishers and publicists] show an interest, but the vast majority of those who approach us and suggest material that they believe might be of interest want to foist books on us that obviously aren't a fit for the site or our interests. And we're still surprised by how hard it can be to convince many publishers to provide us with review copies -- often it's like pulling teeth, and there are quite a few publishers who can't be convinced to provide us with anything. (Our favourite (and all too frequent) experience is requesting a specific title that's an obvious fit for the site -- say the newest novel by someone we already have under review -- and instead receiving something completely different (and entirely inappropriate).)

Mark Sarvas, in turn, responds to the column at Obiter Dicta (his second blog), where he lists his full answers to the Book Babes' questions.

From his answer to the question, "Are literary blogs having an influence on what kinds of books are published and which get reviewed?":

As witnessed by Sam Tanenhaus' response to my recent open letter, it's clear that the big reviews are watching what the blogs are doing and how we're doing it, and it's inevitable that even they will learn a thing or two. As for publishing, I know personally I've received a number of requests from publishers interested in my novel (as have some other bloggers I know) but that might merely be part of the fad-like interest that's sprung up around us right now. (See the recent New Yorker piece on ICM agent Kate Lee.) Beyond that I'm not really sure what sort of influence bloggers will have per se, although I do expect to begin to see bloggers blurbing books with increasing frequency.

Earlier this week, GC reported on Kirkus Reviews' new pay-per-review service, disingenuously titled "Kirkus Discoveries." Today, Publishers Lunch rounds up additional reactions to Kirkus' new service:

On the pay-per-review front, a number of folks have reported that Bowker's BookWire is also entering the game. Their site says:

"Are you having a problem obtaining a review of your title? Now you will be able to order a professionally written, edited and signed book review from BookWire."

We wrote to the posted e-mail for more information, but haven't heard back yet.

Separately, the folks at Foreword, who found themselves criticized in some quarters when they launched ForeWordReviews.com in 2001--also providing commissioned reviews--are remembering with amusement that Kirkus Reviews ran "a cartoon that parodied the service on their cover."

Actually, BookWire's service has been in place for quite some time -- GC first noticed it about five months ago. What GC hasn't done until now, though, is check out BookWire Reviews' "Sample Review" (PDF), which contains a wonderful, and self-defeating, (mis-)use of "obtuse":

THE BLIND MIRROR
Christopher Pike

Pike brings another exciting blend of mystery, horror and the supernatural with his latest, a novel with obtusely interweaving storylines and more than a few surprises.

... Pike tries his hand at the fashionable but precarious story-within-a-story approach in this novel, and to his credit, manages to pull it off with a flourish -- the numerous sub-plots and well-fleshed-out secondary characters provide enough twists to keep you guessing throughout ... An effortlessly gripping and entertaining read that is sure to spice up any spooky winter night.

GC suggests BookWire Reviews put up a more confidence-inspiring sample, unless it knows for sure that its customers don't know the word "obtusely," either.

The Toronto Star interviews [GC's favorite comic book artist] Adrian Tomine:

When asked if he ever felt as though he was labouring under the weight of not being a bona fide literarian, he just laughs.

"I still don't even know if I am," said Tomine, who this evening becomes the first comic book artist to appear as part of the Harbourfront Reading Series.

"It's such a strange situation right now, because I'm very grateful for all the attention and acceptance from the literary world, but at the same time, I don't think that I, or most of my cartoonist friends, have ever aspired to that. It's a really helpful, flattering by-product, but we don't want to be thought of as the poor cousin who's just now being allowed into the family."

• 3 AM Magazine's Man Booker Blog rounds up papers' responses to the shortlist. Also worth noting: reviewsofbooks.com's Man Booker Prize reviews.
• Selections from the newest issue of Bookforum (inlcuding yet another piece on the legacy of Graham Greene) are now online.
• Over at The Review of Contemporary Fiction: another round of new reviews.

Among the new book blogs GC has been enjoying lately is Robert Gray's Fresh Eyes: A Bookseller's Journal, a Publishers Marketplace blog.

Here's an excerpt from Gray's Sep. 14 post, "Missed-Titles":

Decoding customer requests is a daily task, a series of Holmesian moments in which clues are presented and deductions made, elementary and otherwise.

... We used to keep track of the more priceless requests, which included:

Farewell my Porcupine (Farewell my Concubine), Penetration X (Generation X), A Good Book on the Twin Cities (A Tale of Two Cities), Bullwinkle's Mythology (Bulfinch's Mythology), Bridges of Madison Avenue (Bridges of Madison County), the Rape of the Pope by Lock (The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope), Zero Thumb on Friday (Zero Sum Society), and, the winner and still champion, Snow Falling in Cedar Rapids, Snow on Shingles, Winter on Trees, Snow Falling on Skiers, and Snow Falling on Caesars (Snow Falling on Cedars).

My favorite recent missed-title was Peggy Sue and the House of Hair (Patty Jane's House of Curl).

What we really do is play a game of tag-team mnemonics. Customers unconsciously create their own weird mnemonics for books, and then come to us for painless extraction of the correct title. And it works almost every time.

• Excerpt from Anne Rice's Diary: Anne Rice Defends Her Day
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Book Titles
• How to interview Margaret Atwood
• Bookspan asks eight bookclubs what Bush and Kerry should be reading. Their answer: the Bible.
• Dear Young Hollywood ...