But since I have you on mute, I thought I might share a few thoughts.

Team Renesmee.

Boy books are usually girl books in disguise.

Plain.

Writers who pay bloggers for reviews aren’t worth reading.

@JenniferWeiner is annoying.

And so is everybody else on Twitter.

Train.

All self-publishers secretly want a book deal.

Honor Books are runners-up.

Maggie Smith should rein it in a little.

That is all.

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What is up with Republicans? When they’re not trying to monkey with the laws of supply and demand, as above, they keep busy legislating health care. Ayn Rand is crying in hell, and the fact that Gaiman donated his fee to charity only makes her feel worse. (I’m kind of with her there.  I’m sorry Gaiman felt compelled to tell us how he spent the money–who cares?) If somebody wants to pay me $45,000 for a speech, I’ll gladly take it and do my utmost to push those dollars swiftly back into our flatlined economy. Dentists, opticians, roofers rejoice!

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and I’ll be signing at BEA if you’re in the neighborhood.

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The idea for the panel, said co-owner Margie Scott Tucker, came from a statement made by Alan Kaufman, novelist, memoirist, influential in the Spoken Word movement and editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Literature: “When I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.” Kaufman moderated the panel, called the “Great Internet Book Burning Panel.” (No books e or otherwise were actually burned despite the catchy title.)

Other panelist included beat generation icon Herbert Gold, San Francisco Noir author Peter Plate, Ethan Watters, author of several books including Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family? and Cleis Press’s Brenda Knight, a participant in the Google case.

Kaufman began by reading an essay soon to be published in Barney Rossett’s Evergreen Review, which is now an online-only publication, he noted. “The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now der Book,” he read. “High-tech propagandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle.”

Even speaking as someone whose Kindle gathers dust and who views shopping at Amazon.com as an unpleasant act of last resort, get the fuck over yourself.

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And if you’re going to whine about how you used to be reviewed (and how that must hurt) by Anne Tyler, it might be politic to spell her name right.

[Update 11:45 AM. It looks like Alice Hoffman wisely thought to retreat from the field and suspended or cancelled her account. But for those who missed it, Hoffman had taken issue, via several Twitter messages, with a review by Roberta Silman of her latest book in the Boston Globe. Along with publishing the reviewer's phone number and encouraging readers to call and give her hell, Hoffman complained, "Now any idiot can be a critic. Writers used to review writers. My second novel was reviewed by Ann Tyler. So who is Roberta Silman?"]

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