NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

Pittsburgh Post Gazette Books Editor Bob Hoover has written about books with the paper for more than 20 years. We talk here, at a noisy diner

in the shadow of the Heinz ketchup factory, about the role of a books editor, Pittsburgh's lively literary arts scene, blogs, the 800-900 review copies Bob receives each month, and keeping readers current about everything book related. We also talk about Bob's connection with authors David McCullough and Michael Chabon, and his disconnect with Philip Roth and Paul Theroux; about Ernest Hemingway's Cuban home, and the reviewing genius of John Updike.

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Copyright © 2009 by Nigel Beale. www.nigelbeale.com

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I, along with many others, received this email from Ken Rockburn last Friday afternoon:

This is a large group e-mail and there are likely some of you who could care less about it’s content, so just go about your business and smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

For the rest of you, this the "official" announcement of my retirement from the dodgy world of broadcast journalism.  As of 11:30 AM on Monday, June 16th (30 seconds after my final interview ((with Jack Layton)), I will have, in the immortal words of the Beatles, "that magic feeling, nowhere to go".
For those of you who have either been my guests over the years, or provided me with guests over the years, my sincerest and deepest thanks.  If I looked and sounded like I knew what I was talking about and what I was doing, it was because of all of you.

And, at the risk of sounding like Norm on Cheers, I can always be found on the fourth stool from the left at the bar of the Black Tomato.

Hasta luego,
Ken

Here, for those interested, is my interview with Ken conducted a year or two back. We wish him great good fortune in all his future exuberances.
 

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Photo of Ed and Edgar from here.

Edward Pettit is a freelance book reviewer and writes the Bibliothecary blog.  He also  pursues graduate studies in literature at bucolic Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and teaches writing at La Salle University in Philadelphia. After having spent the first twenty-seven years of his life in the same Philadelphia neighborhood (Olney), he now resides just outside the "Athens of America" in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania with his lovely wife, five daughters and lottsa books. Oh, and one other thing, he’s a fanatical fan …if this isn’t redundant…of Edgar Alan Poe…and hosts a blog dedicated to all things Edgar at Ed and Edgar.

He is busy writing a book about Poe’s years in Philadelphia, due out in 2009, the bicentenary of the author’s birth.

We met recently at the Philadelphia Book Festival. In this interview Ed treats us to a thumbnail biography of Poe,  his childhood, where he lived, studied and worked, what he wrote, which relative he married, which street corner he collapsed on, who championed him and who wrote the best books about him.

Please listen here to this intriguing life story:

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John Freeman is president of The National Book Critics Circle. Founded in 1974, the NBCC is a non-profit organization consisting of nearly 700 active book reviewers who honor quality writing and communicate with one another about common concerns. We met recently to talk, among other things, about the NBCC’s awards program, their impressive new blog called Critical Mass, and the Campaign to Save Book Reviews, which is addressing the alarming shrinkage of newspaper book review sections across North America. 

Here is an article by author Michael Connolly on the folly of downsizing book reviews.  

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Larry Mathews is a Professor of English at Memorial University in Newfoundland and a highly regarded literary critic. We speak here about the role of the literary critic, the 'top 10' Newfoundland novels, canonicity, quality, scope and prominence, 'importance', subjectivity, irony as a selection criteria, thesis mongering, the anxiety of influence and Harold Bloom. Some of Newfoundland's best known authors, including Lisa Moore and Michael Winter, started off their careers in Larry's classroom.

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Photo from here. Martin far left. (Funny. Only image of Martin on the net resides on the British Council’s site…) Martin Levin is the very popular (particularly at Book Expo Canada) Books Editor at the (Toronto) Globe and Mail newspaper. We talk here about namesakes in Tolstoy, guilt, tragedy, sorrow at not being able to review anywhere near all worthy books, Blockbusters syphoning money away from deserving titles, getting boys to read books, graphic novels, Canadian literature as post-colonial/nationalist, Cynthia Ozick, post-modern levelling, discerning value, the benefits of competition, the decline of book talk in print, and Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Copyright © 2006 by Nigel Beale

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