Praise be to God...

...for Charlie Brooker.

Way to go, Warren!

"Georges Perec is the finest French writer of the twentieth century. There. I've wanted to stake that claim, in print, for the last twenty-five years." So says Warren Motte and I, for one, ain't going to disagree. An excellent introduction to the great man's work, I think this essay has been knocking around for a bit but I only just came across it.

Alma Dreams Come True...

Don't know much about new publisher Alma Books but what I've seen I liked. I recently read Tom McCarthy's "Remainder" which I thoroughly enjoyed, particularly its Bartleboothian opening half. Now I see that they've released the new book from the mighty Mr Vollman and still more intriguingly, the latest from Colson Whitehead. His first, "The Intuitionist" was superb and if "John Henry Days" never matched it, it was nevertheless an intriguing book. Anyway, if anyone at Alma comes across this post and wants to send me some books, that would be beautiful. Failing that, I'll carry on buying them...

Talking of serious and high-minded independent publishers, New Directions are planning to release seven (count 'em) books from sadly-deceased Chilean legend Roberto Bolano over the next couple of years. I guess Harvill will be releasing over here, but don't wait. "Last Evenings On Earth," a collection of short stories, was definitely the pick of my summer reading, though I find it hard to explain why...

Google A.I.

"We are not scanning all those books to be read by people. We are scanning them to be read by an AI."
Interesting piece about just why Google is planning to scan as many books as it possibly can and add them to the web. And it's nothing to do with breaking copyright or becoming an e-publisher...

Offsite Quote Business

I've stuck all the quotes over here for ease of access, in the hope that I'll find something interesting to write about...

You can get to 'em from the sidebar, too...