Happy Mother's Day with domestic gifts

EW put together a list of 24 books to give your mom for Mother's Day (which is useful to you now only if you're a day late...). I only link to it late because it's a bit oddly skewed toward domestic tasks, with books about cooking, sewing, decorating, and gardening making up the vast majority of titles. And sure, a lot of moms like those things. But where are the zombie survival guides? The local restaurant guides? Moms can like thrillers, too. Just saying.

So, moms: what books would you prefer for holidays?

Things about Twilight I could have kept from you

I have, in the past, been a bearer of Twilight related bad news for society. I have sworn that, one day, I will be a force for good, instead of evil, but it just keeps being easier to bring the bad Twilight news to the fore. So, continuing my trend: did you know that Twilight related baby names have shot through the roof? There's going to be a whole generation of boys named Cullen dating girls named Bella, causing their parents to squee to no end.

And, although the boys won't sparkle, there are coping methods for non-sparkle boyfriends. ...Are these all signs of the apocalypse, or just me getting a headache?

Feminist toys for girls and boys

Check out the Bronte sisters action figures, and the Brontesaurus:

Do want. And thanks to Michael, for sending this along!

Rounding up, rounding up the road

At Pimp My Novel. Go go!

Also, I think I've made a reference to The Wiz previously in a round up title, and I'm not sure because I won't look it up. How's that for lazy?

The bodice rippers of architecture

An awesome new collaboration between romance publisher Mills & Boon and the UK's National Trust has inspired Meredith Blake to consider similar collaborations in the US.

She says it might be a little difficult, but, hello, sweeping plantations of the South! Ranches and stately northern farms! ...Other places! We can do for the Walt Disney Concert Hall what Dan Brown did for the Vatican.

Once again Amazon confuses "bestseller" with "most downloaded"

Over at Jacket Copy we learn that the top 10 Kindle downloads are free. And, look, as someone who regularly creates free content (that is read by people who regularly create free content) I'm not saying there's anything wrong with offering an e-book for free. I think it can be a savvy publicity tool, and a nice boost for your numbers (clearly). But I will say that these are not bestsellers because they're not being sold.

So, yes, these are the top 10 Kindle downloads. But they are not the top 10 sellers. As the Jacket Copy post says, other titles by the same authors that are being sold (as opposed to being given away) are ranked in the mid-thousands, which really makes you question how good a sense you can get of what people like and what people take because it's free.

I vote we actually make a distinction between "most sold" and "most downloaded." Because most people I know stream movies they would never pay for, use Pandora to listen to music they would never buy, and, oh, use the Kindle to download books they would never purchase.

How to cope with your unread library

Kirsty Logan writes at the Millions about her vast collection of unread books, why she keeps them, and how she avoids feeling guilty about them. I have absolutely felt this way before:

Last week I bought a book. I looked at the blurb and read the first paragraph, and I could feel the texture of the book in my mind....With every sentence I read, the book I had imagined shrank smaller and smaller. By the end of the third page, it had disappeared. The actual book was by no means bad, it just wasn’t the book I thought it would be.

Been there! I think I'm also less likely to read books I got for free, or bought for cheap, as opposed to books I've borrowed, or expensive books I've bought. Am I alone in this?

Get sucked into a book

For reals!

Angry authors say great things

Amazing list of quotes from angry authors. Oh god, I love when people say things they shouldn't (who aren't me).

The New Yorker speaks

The New Yorker (holiest of holy)'s web editor Blake Eskin talks about how the New Yorker approaches the internet. He says:

...[I]f you had to come up with a list of adjectives for what the New Yorker brand represents – excellence, polish, depth – those aren’t necessarily things you can achieve on a blog, podcast or Twitter feed.

When we started the website the original plan was to fact check blog posts and that just doesn’t work. You can’t ask people to write in a freer, more immediate way and then put them through the same editorial machine. But New Yorker writers tend to have informal voices that are a lot more formal than most.

Fair point! He talks a lot about tying in blogs and print--really interesting, really worth the read.

Animals as plot devices

Many have lauded Yann Martel's use of animals as characters in his novels (but not all). Andrew O'Hagan has a great article about animals as major characters in fiction. Interesante!

Inside the house of Dave Barry

The NYTimes went to Dave Barry's house, took some pictures, and did an interview that allowed him to speak more than the interviewer (unlike Deborah Solomon, my arch-nemesis, who quotes herself more often than the people she's interviewing). Barry says:

Best Recent Gift: My wife gave me a shaving thing with a brush on it. For 35 years I shaved in the shower, without looking, which is why my right sideburn was always shorter than my left. The new shaver has made me a more clean-cut human being, and I even use after-shave, and women want to have sex with me now. All of them.

If He Had $20 He’d Buy: Just $20? Well, that rules out drugs.

Well, I've found someone else I'm a fan of.

Books to read before 16 (or now, if you have the time)

I usually have some arguments with lists, but I think this list of 20 books to read before you turn 16 is pretty solid. Granted, I haven't read all of them, but I didn't say, "Really?" to any of them, which is a huge thing in my world.

Jewish fiction as the quintessential American experience

At 3 Quarks Daily, Bliss Kern writes about new Jewish fiction and its place as the new American experience:

New Jewish American authors find themselves free from the burden of identity politics and have space to allow the particularity of their characters and stories to emerge. The stories that have emerged so far have the power to speak to readers with little or no relationship to Judaism. The pages of these stories capture the unselfconscious attachment young Americans, raised to tell a story of being 1/4 this and 1/4 that, have for their mythic past. Their characters are familiar to all; like young Americans today, they must all refashion myths from the past to craft a sense of self and collective identity in which they can feel comfortable. Although a past story of exile and landlessness stands almost in direct opposition to the American story of patriotism and manifest destiny, the stakes of recognizing each as not the truth of the present do not.

This piece is worth the read, I think. I would say, however, that the thesis seems to boil down to the idea that Jewish writers are American, rather than an "Other," which I think is a little reductive, of both what makes an American and an American Jew.

Erotica saves publishing, peasants rejoice

Apparently erotica is one of the few growth industries in publishing. To quote:

Exactly why erotic literature has become so popular now is a matter of speculation, though it doesn't seem entirely coincidental that the creators were mostly raised in the era of Madonna videos on MTV, open discussion of sex during the initial HIV scare, and the mainstreaming of porn. Much of the new erotica is simply porn moved to the printed page, only smarter and largely aimed at women.

Once again, Madonna is at fault. Damn you, Madonna!