Links galore

So when did quoting Amazon.com become de rigeur for Grey Lady reviews? You have to wait till the very end of Janet Maslin's double review of Janet Evanovich and Stuart Woods but believe me...it's there. And quite, quite odd.

The shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award has been announced, and the paper's John Ezard dissects the list.

And the Saltire Shortlist for the Best Scottish Book has been announced as well.

Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld received a prestigous French literary award, the Medici Prize for best Foreign Work.

Everything you wanted to know about the centennial of Graham Greene can pretty much be found here. (link from TEV, who's pushing himself out of the doldrums with a wealth of posts this morning. Yay!)

Mark Gatiss, the man responsible for the League of Gentlemen TV series in Britain, has jumped to writing novels. He tells the Guardian what the difference in medium is, at least for him.

Katrina Kenison has a very difficult job: going through over 3000 stories to create a shortlist for each edition of the Best American Short Stories collection. USA Today talks to her about the arduous process.

A new biography of George Washington attempts to separate man from myth, according to the Chicago Sun-Times' Debra Pickett.

A memo to publishers: be very careful if one of your executives is robbing you blind. Luckily, this one in Japan just got five years in prison for embezzlement.

And finally, how did the most important Ohioans of our time vote in Tuesday's election? Click here to find out.

Comments

[Laura]

So Janet Maslin reviews Janet Evanovich and Stuart Woods today. We can debate the merits of choosing to review big bestsellers when the books are disappointing, but here's something that interests me more: Since April of this year, Evanovich is the only female crime writer (outside Fay Kellerman, writing with her husband, Jonathan) to be reviewed in Maslin's daily column. Grafton, Scottoline and Evanovich's Stephanie Plum book received the omnibus treatment in a Friday column, but no other woman crime writer has merited daily review attention in the Times since April 04.

I did this quickly, but a search of the Times' archives for Maslin's byline pulls up 60 reviews since April. (It would let me access the full 87 for '04 to date.) Of those, I counted 17 crime novels. They included Lee Child, George Pelecanos, Mike Connelly, Walter Mosley, Harlan Coben, Jonathan Kellerman (twice), T. Jefferson Parker, Alexander McCall Smith, Jeff Lindsay. (I threw Jon Searles in there because Maslin seems to think it was a crime novel.) Maybe I missed one or two, so instead of being 17 to 1.5, it could be, oh, 18-3, for a tidy ratio of 6-1. Does that strike anyone as, well, a little off?

A self-interested survey? Perhaps. But I was happy to be overlooked by the Times. What irks me is that ABSENT FRIENDS -- a book by one of the most lauded American crime writers working today* -- and a book of strong local interest for the Times, has not been chosen for review by Maslin and it is now a month past the book's publication date. That's just bad news judgment.

*S.J. Rozan is the _only_ writer to win "Best Novel" in the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero Wolfe and Macavity. Harlan Coben and Rick Riordan won the first three as PBOs, and Harlan was the first-ever to pull off the hat trick. But S.J. is the only one to do it in what has to be the most competitive category. Throw in her short story Edgar, and it's quite a streak. Peter Robinson's career is comparable, but he can't compete for the Shamus. Plus, I did say "American."