The early work of web stars such as Ana Marie Cox and Josh Marshall, novelist Sam Lipsyte, music critic Alex Ross, and Bookforum co-editor Chris Lehmann, as well as many others, has been put online at the Feed Magazine archives, an online webzine launched fifteen years ago by Steven Johnson and Stefanie Syman that ran through 2001.
The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" writers to watch list has been one of the biggest stories of the summer so far, but half the fun of the list is arguing about it. The latest counter-list comes from Dzanc books, who have polled "nearly 100 independent publishers, agents, editors, bloggers and reviewers," for their alternate list, but as Robert McCrum writes in The Observer "Leaving aside the taxonomic difficulties of cramming the next generation into a straitjacket, there are larger issues here . . . The onset of middle age, or the approach of oblivion, is perhaps as sharp a spur to literary effort as the intoxicating self-belief of youth."
Amazon has upgraded their e-books so that audio and video content is now playable on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, leaving the Kindle looking a bit obsolete, even as its price has been slashed to $189, and with Amazon offering refunds to Kindle's early adopters. Meanwhile, Moleskine, the hip notebook favored by every would-be author since Hemingway, has introduced a Kindle cover that allows you to scribble notes as you download books—or as you wait in line for your new iPhone.
