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Hot naked authors

Aha. I’m not the only one utterly repulsed by Hogan’s “publishing hotties” series, which tops any vapid book-world gaucherie Muriel Spark could’ve foreseen. (See also.)

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An education in causation

The L.A. Times’ Josh Getlin puts the lie to the ridiculous notion that book bloggers are responsible for the demise of print book reviews.

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Flannery O’Connor’s letters to Betty Hester unsealed

Betty Hester, longtime correspondent, friend, and “adopted kin” to Flannery O’Connor, donated the letters she received from the Southern writer to Emory University in 1987, with the stipulation that they remain sealed for twenty years. In 1998 she committed suicide with a hollow-nose bullet aimed at her skull, after spending the afternoon eating a day-late Christmas dinner and playfully mocking . . .

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Happy weekend from behind the pearly gates

Martha Rebecca Johnston, my grandmother, was born April 23, 1905. She died nine years ago, on May 6, 1998. This post originally included an anecdote about her dream of heaven, which she wasn’t too crazy about, and her funeral, and now you can read it at the end of “My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a . . .

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Visit Geiger’s bookstore

Saturday, in LA: “Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles: In A Lonely Place” tour goes to spots where Chandler’s life and fiction meet.

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