I’ve got three novels to talk about today (and many more in the queue). Today’s report will include one rave, one shrug and one argument.

Triangle by Katharine Weber

Just off the east edge of Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New York is a building that once housed the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, where a terrible fire killed 146 people in 1911. Most of the victims were young immigrant women, and this famous disaster led to a criminal …

Book Review, what’s with the mixed metaphors today? I trust you all took basic English in college? Witness:

Boyle depicts his whirling, pestilential world like an amused, not unaffectionate Hieronymous Bosch, graphically detailing the 31 flavors of greed.
– Will Blythe on T. Coraghessan Boyle’s Talk Talk

Egan constructs a prism that refracts themes of power, knowledge, confinement and escape through the multiple levels of her story.
– Madison Smartt Bell on Jennifer Egan’s The Keep

I was not aware that Bosch ever depicted Baskin-Robbins ice cream. …

My rhythm’s been a bit off lately, leaving me with a bunch of interesting links I want to present to the loyal readers of LitKicks despite the fact that most of these items are already old news on the blogosphere. Well, what can I say? I’m slow, but I’m not dead (yet).

1. Everybody’s talking about the upcoming 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and about the unedited version of the original scroll that will be published for the occasion. …

I discovered novelist Matthew Pearl two years ago, when I was browsing a slim bus-station gift shop bookshelf for anything I could bear to read and found a curiously intellectual paperback titled The Dante Club. I was surprised to encounter the Florentine poet in this setting, and after I bought the book I was thrilled to find a rigorously smart but undeniably entertaining adventure novel featuring not only Dante but a crowd of New England notables — including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James …

A serious poetry chapbook publisher is a rare thing, and that’s why I’m so impressed with Deep Cleveland, a long-running street operation emanating from the famously gritty Northeast Ohio home of Stiv Bators, Hart Crane and, of course, d. a. levy, who Deep Cleveland publisher Mark Kuhar dedicates all his work to.

d. a. levy killed himself in 1968. A Cleveland poet named Russell Salamon was levy’s close friend at the time. Salamon is still writing, and his Woodsmoke …

I’ve just learned of yet another website that has been reviewing the New York Times Book Review each weekend. If this craze gets any bigger it’s going to become the new YouTube. Please check out the NYTBR archives at the Daily Blague, the latest member of the hit squad.

I’m not sure why so many bloggers pay attention to this publication, but I know we all judge it by different formulas. The Literary Saloon wants more literary and international titles covered, …

I’ve never wanted LitKicks to be anything but a literary website, but sometimes I need to write about things that have nothing to do with fiction or poetry. That’s why I’ve decided, after much contemplation, to take the plunge and start my second blog.

I’ve always had a passion for history and political theory, and I’m sure I’ve read more history books than novels in my life. I’ve long wanted to do some writing in this area, and with the stark global events …

Apparently there’s a Blogathon heading our way, and while LitKicks is not going to participate directly (because this blogger prefers to sleep) we are going to host the 24 hour blogging of our very own Caryn Thurman, who was the winner of the 2005 Blogathon Best Webcam Award, and who will be joining the madness again this year to raise money for ProLiteracy.org.

Now, when I say LitKicks is going to host Caryn, you probably think we’re going to host her …

I think I need to start a political blog, because I don’t really feel like writing about books while the carnage continues in Lebanon, Israel and Palestine. I know LitKicks is a literary website, but please bear with me.

Here’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day: “The differences between the Israelis and Palestinians are so great that war is inevitable.”

Differences? Differences! Yeah, I’m laughing. I can’t see a goddamn difference in the world. Let’s take a look:

1. …

1. I’ve never read a book by Mickey Spillane, who died yesterday, but I spent a riveting couple of hours recently watching Kiss Me Deadly, an outrageously interesting 1955 noir classic based on a Spillane novel. A no-name cast (plus a young Cloris Leachman) plays a bunch of not-very-nice people racing against each other to unravel a mystery, which turns out (SPOILER ALERT) to involve a small stash of nuclear material stored in a box in a locker. The idea of …