Confession time: I read popular mass-market paperbacks. Murder mysteries are my favorites, but the occasional romance novel has been known to sneak in here and there. These are books by big-name authors, the ones who often end up as punchlines for people who talk about literature, like John Grisham, for instance. Now, I read my fair share of literary fiction, and I can tell the difference between quality and not-so-quality, but when it comes down to it, I don’t actually care. …

I’m in the Brooklyn home of Danny Simmons, artist, novelist, poet and creator of HBO’s groundbreaking Def Poetry. Danny’s living room is like an art gallery — no, it’s like three art galleries all packed together in one room, and the good-natured eclectic chaos I see around me reminds me of the welcoming attitude of the long-running TV show I’m here to ask Danny about.

Hey! For the second time in one month, a paperback original by a first novelist is on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. This is a very, very good trend.

Tom McCarthy’s Remainder is about a guy suffering from some type of existential dislocation (or brain injury) after a terrible accident. He’s also won a liability settlement that’s made him ridiculously wealthy, yet Liesl Schillinger’s favorable review of McCarthy’s book zeroes in on the universality of …

1. Janet Maslin doesn’t think much of William T. Vollmann’s new non-fiction
book Poor People, in which he interviews and philosophizes about several specimens of downtrodden people including various real-life hobos, prostitutes and drug addicts. This book sounds almost like flame-bait, and I wonder if Vollmann is intentionally aiming to offend readers with this blunt title. Nobody likes to be categorized — am I poor? Are you poor? I’m really not sure what Vollmann’s up to with this whole thing, but I’ll …

Living in the Information Age, as we apparently do, one thing that’s easy is finding things to read. We often think of reading in a traditional way — sitting down with a book and turning pages — but there’s so much more than that. Even before the time when we pretty much always had a web browser open, there were plenty of things available for reading, from the backs of cereal boxes to the graffiti on bathroom walls.

Do you read one book at …

I can’t hold back an amused smile when I hear about new online writing projects like Penguin’s A Million Penguins, in which a large number of people are attempting to compose a collaborative novel using Wiki software (there’s also a side blog to keep things moving and provide structure). At this point, the Million Penguins blog is somewhat readable, while the main wiki-novel is a fast-changing mass of incomprehensible notions apparently involving whales, bananas and a guy named Artie. Maybe tomorrow …

Here are three books I’ve recently enjoyed. I’m saving my favorite of the three for last.

1. Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Winter’s Bone is the straightforward saga of a brave teenage girl trying to hunt down her Meth-cooking father before she and her kid brothers lose their home to the bail bondsman. The book’s most unique feature is its setting, a downtrodden Appalachian mountain community. I like Woodrell’s minimalist pacing and deadpan storytelling, although by the book’s end I wasn’t sure if …

A nasty review of a novel is a recognizable form in itself, and a nasty review is entirely different from a bad review, in which a critic will often express sympathy for the book’s author or try to locate some saving grace. But if an author is too popular or successful to need sympathy, or if the book represents some new literary nadir, then the critic must reach back, aim, and begin pummeling. This is the treatment Sophie Harrison attempts to give to …

Def Poetry is coming back! The sixth season of this underrated cable TV show begins midnight Friday, featuring a guest appearance by DMX.

As my longtime readers now, I think Def Poetry is well worth watching, not to mention worth reviewing. It’s the only television series featuring original poetry on any major TV outlet, period. The show isn’t perfect, and can sometimes drag down into predictable spoken-word ruts. But there are always at least a couple of …

I learned how to play chess when I was 10 years old from a migrant farmer. I had a bit of an attention span problem so I didn’t gain much from our lessons, other than the names of the pieces and how to move them. I was terrible at chess back then, and to tell the truth, I remain so, but despite my brutal competitiveness that rears its ugly head whenever I’m doing something that even remotely involves winning, I don’t seem to …