Recommendations

RSS New at The Constant Conversation

  • Anything West of Chicago Is Not Necessary March 17, 2010
    Andrew Seal argues that “Chicago and New York are to U.S. fiction what Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are to the Russians. Sorry, Boston. Sorry, L.A. Sorry, D.C. Sorry, San Fran. Sorry, the South. You have your claims, no doubt, but they are as the claims of Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov, or Gogol.” Discuss. […]
    Scott Esposito
  • Who’s Bad? March 17, 2010
    Phelan goes on to say, "There will, I’m sure, be no consensus about what constitutes badness or whether it belongs to the book, the reader, the situation of reading, all of the above, or none of the above," though he's almost wrong there. The list is pretty varied, from the morally-bankrupt to the so-bad-it's-good varieties, though gene […]
    John Lingan
  • Vollmann Interview March 17, 2010
    Wherein we learn that Imperial hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves and “Vollmann was exceptionally gracious as both host and interview subject, quite generous with his whiskey and his time.” […]
    Scott Esposito
  • Margaret Atwood + hockey movie musical = Heaven March 17, 2010
    In some of the best news ever, Margaret Atwood is going to have a cameo in a movie musical about hockey. Seriously. I am — what is the word? – giddy. Don’t believe me? Atwood discusses it on her blog. Can this news get better? Hell, yes. The movie also stars Olivia Newton-John. […]
    Matt Jakubowski
  • New NYRB March 17, 2010
    New issue of the New York Review of Books is out, with Colm Tóibín on exile lit. […]
    Scott Esposito
  • More from the NBCC Awards March 17, 2010
    With jokes from Joyce Carol Oates and "wild imaginings" from 92-year-old winner Diana Athill -- not to mention talk of a sequel from "Wolf Hall" author Hilary Mantel -- this year's NBCC Awards were noteworthy for their celebration of literature by women. […]
    Matt Jakubowski
  • Broom of the System Gets Cover Makeover, Plus One Cover I Love and One I Hate March 17, 2010
    DFW's latest cover makeover, plus a great-looking cover and a really not-so-great-looking cover. […]
    Scott Esposito
  • Rereading Wallace Stevens March 17, 2010
    Since buying The Selected Poems of Wallace Stevens at City Lights, I’ve been rereading many Stevens poems and trying to understand it from a more mature perspective.  Last time I read a vast amount of Stevens was when I was 22 for a class on Stevens, T.S. Eliot, Yeats, and Marianne Moore.  With fifteen years [...] […]
    Soo Jin Oh
  • Best Translated Book Award 2010 March 17, 2010
    The 2010 Best Translated Book Awards were announced last night at Idlewild Books, Manhattan. The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven, translated by Dalya Bilu won the fiction award, and the poetry award went to Elena Fanailova for The Russian Version, translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler. Check out the [...] […]
    Jeff Waxman
  • NBCCA March 17, 2010
    The National Book Critics Circle Award is announcing their winners tonight.  The diversity of their nominations, from the better known (such as Hilary Mantel and Mary Karr) to the less mainstream (such as Rachel Zucker and Eula Biss), makes the blog entries on the nominees an interesting read.  I added Stephen Burt’s Close Calls with [...] […]
    Soo Jin Oh

Reader Picks
«  
  »

Face-Out

Face-Out

Borders is shelving more books with the face out, leading to about 5 to 10 percent less books shelved total. Probably this will help sales, but I don’t particularly like this, as I’m guessing that this will lead to even more covers designed to "grab" a browser’s attention.

For me, book browsing has always been about taking the time to really search through the shelves of fiction. It’s a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, thumbing through book after book, reading pages here and there. Simply, that’s what’s magical about browsing for books. Anything designed to make the process faster and more about what’s on top than what’s inside would be anathema to that.

Pass it on:
  • Print
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Blogplay
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter
March 20th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized

3 comments to Face-Out

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>