Errol Morris's book A Wilderness of Error won't be out until September, but it's already gathering attention in the Twittersphere. Morris returns to the murder trial that Janet Malcom made famous in the Journalist and the Murderer and comes to the conclusion—contrasting Malcolm's—that accused killer Jeffrey MacDonald was wrongly imprisoned. "Anyone who read Journalist and the Murderer must read this new errol morris book," tweeted Boston Globe reporter Leon Neyfakh. "Janet malcolm should be ashamed of herself."
Adam Sternberg, a culture editor at the New York Times Magazine, has sold his first novel, Shovel Ready—about a garbageman who becomes a hitman—to Crown Publishing.
Salon inaugurates their new column of audiobook reviews with a review of the audiobook for Dave Egger’s A Hologram for the King. In addition to liking the book, columnist Kyle Minor praises the narrator for pursuing “a kind of accordioning strategy, in which a regularized ramping-up and releasing of vocal tension mirrors each chapter’s pleasing push-pull of scene and narration.”
Is Gary Shteyngart a blurbing whore? A Tumblr dedicated to his prolific blurbing and a Salon slideshow ask readers to decide for themselves.
A new issue of the Slate Book Review is out, with essays by Dan Kois, Troy Patterson, Jacob Silverman, and lots of other good stuff.
An underemployed twentysomething with a Master’s degree in English wanted to see who was beating him out for all the jobs he was applying for. So he made up the most generic job listing he could, posted it on Craigslist, and one day and 653 applications later, wrote about the results for Thought Catalog.
Amazon has come under fire from anti-child-trafficking groups for carrying a self-published book that appeared to promote pedophilia overseas. The book listed the age of consent for countries around the world, and had been available on the site since last October, and available for free download in the Kindle Lending Library. It was taken down late last week.
