uh.

Somewhat deliberately, I’ve avoided reading news reports about the drama between Amazon and MacMillan until now.  I don’t own a kindle (or any other e-reader) so I’m not personally invested in this in any way, so I figured it might be best to ignore it.

This morning I finally read a few articles on the subject and was surprised by what I found.  If you’d like a good summary of the whole debacle, I’d suggest reading David Parkman’s “Weighing in on Amazon/Macmillan Pricing Debate,” (it’s the most factually relevant article I found on this subject, though you might find it slightly skewed toward the pro-Amazon side).
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lright. I’ve got to admit it. Twitterature bothers me.

You can read my original post about it here.

I’ll admit that the book could be funny, after all there’s clearly a bit of humor that has gone into its production, however I dislike the way this book was put together and marketed.  It seems to me in poor taste that a couple of undergraduates will make money off of what are essentially low-quality CliffsNotes.  It also seems in poor taste to me that Penguin’s website for the book only hints at the comedy, while also strongly pushing the notion that shortened, comedic, and easy-to-read blurbs about literary classics are more accessible and enjoyable for the modern reader.

The only reason I’m making yet another post about this book is this comment I received on my earlier post on the subject: ¶ View In Entirety… →

esterday, Gapers Block made a post about Ewan Morrison’s list of the top ten literary threesomes.  Apparently the list contained two Chicago author’s books.  The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag, a University of Chicago Alum, came in at #7 while Ernest Hemingway took the cake with The Garden of Eden placed at #1.  Apparently he was born in Oak Park.  (I should brush up on my Hemingway trivia, I ’spose).  Anyway, today I was rereading the post and discovered that a comment that asked the simple question, “what makes an author a Chicago author?” The commenter, Pete, found it ridiculous to call these two Chicago authors based solely on their limited experiences with/in the city.

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he names of prominent Chicagoans are engraved in stone throughout newly constructed Pritzker Park, on the corner of State and Van Buren Streets.  One of those Chicagoans happens to be Sandra Cisenos.

Wait, …what?

The author’s name is actually Sandra Cisneros. An error seems to have occured somewhere between the Chicago Public Library and Speedy Gonzalez Landscaping, the company who did the engravings. This may shed a little more light on Cisneros’ recent negative comments on her experiences growing up in Chicago as a Latina.  Given that her name has been spelled incorrectly, etched in stone, and displayed in a public space in downtown Chicago, I find it hard to blame her.

orgive me for posting about Printer’s Row again, but the Tribune’s review of the event screams to be shared.  Phil Vettel seems to have enjoyed the event, praising its success despite the weather.  His review is mostly a list of highlights.  There are authors, there are booksellers, and there are “picture perfect moments.”  He writes:

“Picture-perfect moment: A strikingly attractive woman in jeans leaned up against a building, taking occasional photos of the goings-on, while a fellow in a baseball cap, as discreetly as possible, lined up his camera to capture the good-looking girl leaning up against the building. Had I brought my camera …”

What is this stalkery creepiness doing in a Tribune article?  Go to Printer’s Row, you might buy some books, but you might also get to take pictures of cute, unsuspecting girls?  It’s sad to me that women can be turned into objects even in the middle of a Tribune article on a book fair.  I expect a higher level of journalism from them.

In other news, if you’re interested, the Tribune also has an article praising Dalkey Archive Press that is thankfully free of information about how many attractive women work there and the author’s, or anyone else’s desire to take pictures of them.

n occasion it’s worth emphasizing previously stated points, and this is one of those occasions:  Publish Chicago is a supporter of using technology to enhance publishing.  Do we like the Kindle?  Yes, we do.  Do we like blogs?  Yes, we do.  Are we sad that newspapers are struggling?  Yes.  But BBC news online is so much better, in so many ways.  I bring this up because what I have to say about Volunteer Vacations is that it’s a fantastic body of information that would be so much more useful if it were to be placed on the web than it is in its current, printed-book format.

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may make some people angry with this post.

During the orientation session that UIC held for it’s incoming graduate students last fall, one of the first things out of the program director’s mouth was, “We have AWP in Chicago this year, which is, of course, something that you’ll all be going to.” But then he never explained what the hell AWP actually is, so I placed it in my mental list of Things to Google and left it at that. Turns out that The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) is an enormous organization that sponsors a massive conference each year for publishers and writers. This year, 2009, the conference is in Chicago.

I was somewhat excited and intrigued by this, so this afternoon I headed down to AWP to check it out. The conference is at the Hilton on Michigan Avenue, and runs from Thursday through Saturday. I expected it to be enormous from the panel discussion I attended this Wednesday about how to get the most out of your AWP experience. At this panel was Gina Frangello, executive editor of OV Books; Chris Fink, editor of the Beloit Fiction Journal; Tasha Fouts, editor of Packingtown Review; Ravi Shankar, editor of Drunken Boat; Michael G Czyzniejewski, editor of Mid-American Review, and S.L. Wisenberg, nonfiction editor for Another Chicago Magazine. Tasha Fouts was the only person I knew of on the panel. She’s kind of a spunky spritely woman who is a PhD at UIC in poetry. She runs the literary journal that’s based at UIC too, and she was the youngest person on the panel, and honestly, the most well spoken and professional of the bunch, I thought.

The panel was held in the darkly lit conference room at Barbara’s Bookstore on Halsted. It was my first time in the store and I found the atmosphere quite enjoyable. Here’s what I found out largely about AWP: it’s basically all about free alcohol. The panel opened with a story from each panelist about AWP that was kind of silly/benign, but quickly devolved into a discussion on how to end up in a hot tub with a famous author. I was mildly surprised.

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