Four new books I'm happy to recommend to you:



Unwanted Hopeless Romantic Morons by Geoffrey Alexander Parsons

It's so cool that Book Expo 2009 is taking place, literally, in a crystal palace, otherwise known as Jacob Javits Center in New York City, alongside the Hudson River where only recently a pilot made these words famous:

"We're gonna be in the Hudson."

1. Richard Nash, one of the most well-liked indie publishers on the scene, is leaving Soft Skull/Counterpoint. His blog announcement offers few clues, but we can read between the lines and guess that a) he couldn't take any more of the new ownership and b) he's going to start his own publishing firm.

1. I love it when people disagree with me about something and explain why, and even if offense is sometimes intended, I make it a point never to take it. Daniel Pritchard is sick of me "beating the expensive drum" via my endless complaints about book pricing, and this is what he says:

Here are some recent books that have appealed to me, and might appeal to you:

So we lost the Indie and Small Press Books Fair Literary Trivia Smackdown 2.0. Ed Champion has the blow-by-blow (and I do mean blow), though Ed suggests various complicated and equivocational reasons for PEN America's decisive 16-13 victory, and I say there's only one reason: those folks at PEN America know their stuff.

1. Ahh, zines. Of course the zine scene is still alive (it's been ingested into and mostly absorbed by the blog scene), but we used to print them on paper -- typing paper, computer paper, newsprint -- and try to distribute them in book and record stores.

A self conscious 'movement' calling itself 'the Offbeat Generation' has been emerging in the blogosphere. This generation got its name from Brit-lit Andrew Gallix, founder and editor of 3:AM magazine, who has been described by underground writer, artist and activist Stewart Home as "the Breton of the post-punk generation, the Rimbaud of the Net, Beckett to my Joyce, and Trocchi to my Beckett."