I had two thoughts while reading Rachel Donadio's piece in the Book Review: first, I could have sworn I read this exact article not long ago, and second, it's a fun and frothy little piece but uh, what is the exact point here? So book parties aren't the lavish dos they were in the 70s and 80s. So maybe there isn't as much fighting, as much drinking and coke-snorting as there once was. This is earth-shattering news? Besides, maybe a few noses will get saved in the process of moving things over more completely to the new trend towards pre-publication press lunches.

Damping down the sarcasm jusy a tad, I did find Fran Liebowitz's closing comments to be the best part of the piece: "I often used to say, the more parties there were for a book, the worse the book was." Kind of makes a person wonder which parties she had the displeasure of attending...