– The Guardian has an interview with Gary Snyder about environmental and social responsibility that is absolutely worth reading, especially if you love Gary Snyder like I love Gary Snyder (though I don’t think this is a requirement).

– Media conglomerate Gannett will use USA Today brand for book publishing. I talked to Caryn about this earlier and she made me wonder if this means that when I go on vacation and open my hotel room door, I’ll find a …

BookExpo America, a gigantic annual convention for publishing professionals, is coming to New York City at the end of this week. It’s all going down at the Jacob Javits Center, a cavernous glass building on Manhattan’s west side that was architecturally inspired by London’s legendary Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace burned down in 1936, but it once stood as such a symbol of modernity that it was mocked by Fyodor Dostoevsky in his Notes From Underground (despite the fact that Dostoevsky …

Today’s New York Times Book Review offers two textbook examples of what can be wrong and right about book reviewing: first, a good critic writing a useless review of a major book, then, a good critic writing a good review of a major book.

The first critic is Frank Rich, whose angry editorials in the Times opinion pages and whose theater criticism in Arts and Leisure I’ve always enjoyed. Unfortunately, Rich is overawed by the task of reviewing Don DeLillo’s new 9/11 novel Falling …

1. I’ve been immersing myself in Untold Stories by British humorist, playwright and critic Alan Bennett. Bennett began his career in 1960 as a member of a popular British comic troupe that also featured Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook. Bennett has since settled into a career as a roving intellectual and melancholy prose stylist with a wide range of cultural interests — television, Thomas Gainsborough, the history of Leeds, England, his own plays — and many of these …

I’m here to interrupt Yiddish week with more reviews from my pile o’ books. I have three for you this week, so without further ado, let’s get this party started.

If You Awaken Love by Emuna Elon

This novel takes place in Israel in the years between the Six Day War and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and tells the story of Shlomtzion, whose heart was broken by her former fiance when he broke off the engagement and who has to confront him, finally, years …

Yiddish was my Grandma Clara’s native language. She spoke English (with a cute little accent) when we kids came over, but the newspaper she read was printed in odd, sylvan characters that were as incomprehensible as hieroglyphics to me. There was never any thought that I or my siblings would learn the language, and I guess we always felt a sad sense that Grandma and Aunt Rose spoke a private language that the rest of the world barely knew existed, a language that …

[Editor’s Note: it’s Yiddish Week here at LitKicks. Today we’ve got a review of Michael Chabon’s new novel and an account of a recent Chabon reading by our West Coast friend Cal Godot. Tomorrow we’re looking at Yiddish itself, and examining why it’s suddenly become the trendiest new language since PHP. — Levi Asher]

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union: A Novel by Michael Chabon

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is an interesting blend of Jewish folklore with detective fiction, a sort of Saul Bellow meets Raymond Chandler. …

Sunday night’s very moving Sopranos episode featured W. B. Yeats’ famous poem The Second Coming in a stirring scene. The poem is read by A. J. Soprano, Tony and Carmela’s furtive, lovesick son, after which he ties a cement block to his ankle and jumps into the family pool.

I was already thinking of writing here about the constant stream of literary references that have been found on this show: Herman Melville, Gustave Flaubert, George Orwell, Walt Whitman, Thomas Mann, Henry James, Kazuo …

Today’s New York Times Book Review is practically a “global politics” theme issue with a few fiction reviews sprinkled within. The lack of literary material will annoy some readers, though I am grateful that the editors chose not to pound on the main theme too hard (as in recent weeks). Despite the presence of big articles on nuclear proliferation and presidential history that could just as well have run in this newspaper’s “Week In Review” section, it’s the small review …

1. Soft Skull, probably the best alternative/independent publisher in the USA right now, is being sold and merged into a large holding company managed by Charlie Winton, who has also acquired Shoemaker & Hoard and Counterpoint.

Once again, I’m disappointed that not many of my fellow bloggers seem to be paying attention to stories like these, because the Soft Skull news has not made much of a ripple. Are literary bloggers afraid to write about finance? Can it be that …