In the course of blogging about how the NY Times needs to focus on delivering news that's "true" and "important," Seth Godin has a complaint about the paper's limited books coverage:

"Monday featured TWO stories about Barbara Walters and her new book. Why? We don't need the Times for 'truth' here, and while it may be important to Knopf and to Barbara, it's not really that important to us... The Times needs 50 more bestseller lists, 20 more trusted stories about real political fact and insight, ten more cultural touchstone features... and a lot less filler, a lot less copycat stuff and nothing, nothing about Barbara Walters."

It's not that he's picking on Walters, Godin says, just that "a link to the other sites that can happily review and sell me her book is far more effective than wasting time and resources flogging a book that needs no flogging." (That point may be worth extra consideration, given the book's precisely calibrated media drive.) His solution?

"Pick 20 books a day and point to them, don't write vapid features about three every week. The Times does better when they find something we don't know about and celebrate it instead."

Setting aside the no-doubt robust argument we could have about how often the Times book coverage actually finds "something we don't know about," let's focus on the first half of that statement, which sounds an awful lot like Arts & Letters Daily on steroids.... and, of course, is a near-perfect match for Godin's "lens" model of online information aggregation. For starters, how practical is it? And where would they find "something we don't know about" to point to, given how mainstream book review coverage tends to coalesce around a small batch of "big" books by "big" authors? Discuss.

Sometimes we must try to puzzle out for ourselves why the New York Times Book Review has chosen to review a book. In his review of Mark Sarvas's debut, 'Harry Revised,' Troy Patterson connects the dots for us: "That you are reading a review of this novel in these pages is a testament to the author's success as a blogger." As you might have already guessed, the review isn't a very positive one.

"Harry does not seem to have been reread, never mind revised," Patterson writes. ZING! "I will grant you that these days, only chess players seem to use the word 'gambit' properly, but Harry is supposed to be infatuated with the game of kings. Other terms that the novelist is pretentious enough to use despite his not knowing their precise meanings include 'enormity,' 'parameters,' 'jumper,' 'tortuous' and 'petty crime.' The choicest mixed metaphor finds Harry 'keeping his balls in the air' while he's 'stuck on a roller coaster' carrying him along by 'sheer momentum.'"

(photo: Sara Corwin)

In a polygraphish New York profile, Sam Anderson got Augusten Burroughs to admit that he might, 5 memoirs in, be running out of life-experience to mine: "He says he might be done. He wants to go back to fiction, which he says always feels like an adventure."

Today in the Times, Janet Maslinagrees. After kicking things off by bemoaning the fact that "book's cover graphic packs more of a wallop than the text does," she goes on to mock the affected, Joyce-lite musings of infant Augusten (who pines for "my crib, my homebox, my goodcage" -- oy) and to wonder what, exactly, the dude's father did that was memoir-meritously bad, besides kill a guinea pig.

"[Burroughs] remains a writer with a large and loyal following, a fluent and funny storyteller whenever he actually has stories to tell. Maybe those stories needn't be so personal. Maybe his range can expand beyond tales of dysfunction. And maybe some thoughts belong on the page more than others do," she concludes. Zing. Let's hope Burroughs never gets to pie her.

Regarding yesterday's post on the debate over Martin Amis's The Second Plane, Laila Lalami raises an excellent point:

"I find these disagreements quite healthy, but also very amusing, as it seems no one thinks it necessary or useful to ask a reviewer of the Muslim persuasion to take a look at The Second Plane, a book that is, after all, largely concerned with Muslims: their religion, their beliefs, their politics, their life in Britain, and the violent encounters of the jihadist among them with the West.... Shouldn't the reading public have a chance to find out what one of the people he seems so concerned about make of his work?"

You might remember that two weeks ago, Jim Sleeper defended Martin Amis against what he perceived as the worst excesses of Michiko Kakutani's assault on The Second Plane, Amis's collection of essays and stories on 9/11. So when Leon Wieseltier stomped all over Amis in the NY Times Book Review last Sunday, Sleeper was ready to weigh in, saying that Wieseltier's scorn for "'fine' writers who stray into public intellection" was entirely predictable. "What is surprising," he adds, is that Wieseltier's review is itself so preening and melodramatic," to which a regular reader of the Review might well respond, "This surprises you how, exactly?" I especially love how Wieseltier goes out of his way to slam Nicholson Baker again at the end, four years after Checkpoint.

Sleeper actually agrees with Wieseltier that "Amis is too often grandiloquent and preening, his virtuosity sometimes outrunning reason and even reporting," but he finds the long string of insults Wieseltier unleashes odd, and indulges in a bit of psychobiography to explain how his "gravitas for hire" writing style emerged, as well as discussing Wieseltier's status as a fellow traveler with the neoconservatives who foisted the invasion of Iraq on us. "Wieseltier cannot condemn Amis honestly without condemning himself," Sleeper argues. "So he condemns him dishonestly. And his writing assumes the flat, vacant intensity he imputes to Amis."

(Mind you, Sleeper's argument with Wieseltier has long roots.)

Of course, it wouldn't do the Review much good if Sleeper were the only person talking about the article—one might well consider the possibility that Wieseltier is invited back to the Review over and over again because he creates controversy. And, lo, Leon Neyfakh rounds up some reactions from the likes of Tony Judt, Mark Lilla, and Ian Buruma, which allows Wieseltier an opportunity to get in another cheap shot: "If Buruma believes that one should write stylishly about important things, then he should begin to do so."

(photo of Amis: David Levene/Guardian)

It all started last week, when John Scalzi posted some of his one-star Amazon.com customer reviews, which describe his novels as "very slow, very boring, really not very interesting" and "just fluff and dreck." And that's okay, he says: "I am not under the impression that, alone among all writers who have ever existed, I will be the one whose work is universally acclaimed," he wrote, "nor am I under the impression that when readers who feel burned by work are offered an avenue to express their displeasure, that they will rather prefer to stew privately." He also completely rejected the Deborah MacGillivray approach to bad reviews—instead, he invited other authors to post their worst reviews "and then, you know[,] get past them."

Naturally, mayhem ensued.

So far—unsurprisingly, given Scalzi's fan base—most of the authors participating hail from the science fiction/fantasy community, but crocheting handbook author Kim Werker is playing along too, conceding that someone out there believes "the projects [in Teach Yourself Visually: Crocheting] are ugly and I would not want to learn from this book." But will the fancy lit'ry writers join in the fun?

"With all the grim news about cancelled book sections in the nation's papers," emails mystery author Laurie R. King, "I wanted to mention that the San Francisco Chronicle have expanded their book coverage into a solid and continuous presence. In the past week, for example, there has been at least one and sometimes two book reviews every day, both novels and nonfiction—this in addition to the Sunday book section. They've also had a couple of book-related articles, one on bookstores, the other on a London show of James Bond covers."

And, of course, a profile of Sloane Crosley.

31% of Americans believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, according to a Gallup poll, and if you're looking for insights into what makes that 31% tick, there are two new must-read books for you. Brett Grainger, who was raised as a member of a tiny sect called the Plymouth Brethren, details the history of fundamentalism and his own family's wacky life in 'In The World But Not Of It,' while Daniel Radosh looks at the lighter side of extreme Christianity in 'Rapture Ready,' an in-depth analysis of the alternate universe of Christian pop culture. In an excerpt on Radar, Radosh talks about the challenges confronting Christian comedians (such as: Being at all funny). Grainger's book is a more straightforward history, but it does have its lighter moments -- like the long description of the day his grandparents spent waiting, dressed in their best clothes, to be Raptured up. Luckily, his grandmother had the foresight to defrost a roast, just in case.

Last week, Michiko Kakutani called Martin Amis "chuckleheaded" while discussing The Second Plane, his collection of "preening, self-consciously literary musings" on the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The worst blow? "Mr. Amis should stick to writing fiction and literary criticism," the NY Times literary doyenne concluded, "as he's thoroughly discredited himself with these essays as any sort of political or social commentator."

Jim Sleeper didn't see that review until after he'd already handed in his LA Times review of the book, but now that he's read it, her take reminds him of a line from his own piece: "It would be too easy to read Martin Amis's slim book on 9/11 in a day and dismiss it with a politically correct glare." While he does acknowledge Amis's tendency to preen in this volume, he told me, "that's not reason enough to ignore the courage and acuity he applies to some bromides about 9/11 that have been coagulating among scribblers less agile and independent than he. He isn't always right or even upright, but I don't think that that justifies Kakutani's scolding."

(photo of Amis: David Levene/Guardian)

When Steve Friess saw Friday's GalleyCat interview with Christina Binkley, the WSJ columnist whose credibility he's spent the better part of two weeks smearing in venues ranging from USA Today to Las Vegas Weekly to his own blog, he was so perturbed by Binkley's dismissal of his claims about the wrongness of Winner Takes All, her history of modern Las Vegas, that he dashed off a couple angry emails.

You'll recall that in his USA Today review, Friess claimed that Binkley had never spoken face-to-face with MGM Mirage CEO Terry Lanni. This understandably bothered Binkley, who told me that his statement undermined the credibiility of the direct quotes in Winner Takes All from her interviews with Lanni. So Friess's first email to me Friday had an MP3 attachment from what purports to be a conversation in which Friess asks Lanni if Binkley interviewed him for the book and Lanni says no, and then he told me "Binkley thinks maybe Lanni didn't understand the question."

So I call Binkley, and she tells me that she spoke to Lanni after she heard about that conversation, that he confirmed to her that they had spoken, and that a corporate spokesperson at the Mirage would also confirm that the interviews took place—if, that is, Friess would bother to double-check with Lanni. At that point, I email Friess back, tell him I have no idea of knowing whose voices are on that tape—would he mind giving me the contact info for a spokesperson at the Mirage, and I'll put the question to that spokesperson or to Lanni himself. As he's giving me that contact info, he confirms, without my having raised the issue, that he refuses to recheck the accuracy of his lead, despite the fact that a corporate spokesperson has confirmed to him that the interviews took place and that "it is possible Lanni didn't realize that she was interviewing him for a book." (Keep in mind, Friess's printed position is that "Lanni gave no face-to-face access," not that he did not know or understand the purpose of the interviews even Friess now seems to concede he did give.)

"Is it the job of every journalist to go back to their sources and ask then [sic] again and again when they answer a simple question?" Friess asks. "If she has something to prove, it's her responsibility to have him call me. How is it my job to run around trying to prove I made mistakes when I did what I was supposed to do—I asked the question and got the answer."

I've sent an email requesting clarification to the spokesperson at the Mirage; if anything comes of that, I'll be sure to mention it. (UPDATE: Alan Feldman emails back: "Mr. Lanni was interviewed many times by Ms. Binkley during her long tenure as the gaming reporter for the Wall Street Journal. I personally made the arrangements for her interviews while she was writing her book. It is possible that I was not clear enough in explaining to Mr. Lanni the background for those interviews related to the book." Does that sound to you like Lanni gave no face-to-face access?)

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