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I’ve got so little time today that I’m going to resort to the “blogger’s friend,” which, alas, unlike the “mother’s friend” or gin, contains no alcohol. Nope, the blogger’s friend is a cluster of links.

At least they’re not links to my other blog…I briefly considered that, but decided that would lead me down a slippery slope ending in posting photos of my latest pedicure.

No, these links are to other lit blogs I read and hope you’ll find interesting. They’re truly litlinks in the sense that each one led me to the other…even though I receive feeds of blogs, I still click around from time to time in a decidedly old-fashioned way. If you’ve got recommendations for your own favorite lit blogs, please share them in the comments.

GalleyCat recommends Kassia Krozser’s essay about the demise of the LA Times Book Review.

Mark Athitakis talks about why book bloggers often don’t review books.

Jerome Weeks on Larry McMurtry’s Books.

M.J. Rose overheard the answer to everything at ThrillerFest.

Whew, I’m exhausted. Hammock time!

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I knew it wouldn’t be the same. I knew I’d never feel the same frisson as I did when Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews gamboled across the small screen as Charles and Sebastian in the ITV mini-series of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited. But upon hearing that Julian Jarrold was making a new film adaptation, I was powerless to stop myself from going to see it. Dreaming spires! Country house life! Venice!

Oh, I knew there were those who’d already said this new film didn’t measure up to its television predecessor, (although others were better pleased) but I didn’t care. Last Saturday, the first moment I could steal away, I was at my local art-house cinema, queued up for a ticket — yes, alone. Much as I anticipated the experience, I knew it wasn’t for everyone.

The movie opens during World War II, as Charles Ryder returns to the grand estate that has so affected his life. There’s a tight shot of the back of a soldier’s neck, and as that neck turned, I nearly jumped out of my seat — it wasn’t Jeremy Irons’s face, it was Matthew Goode’s! My feeble Anglophilic brain so strongly identifies Irons with this role that I wanted it to be Jeremy Himself.

Sigh. I ate some popcorn (mixed with M&Ms; if you haven’t tried it, thank me later) and settled back to see what Jarrold had made of Waugh.

I won’t keep you in suspense. By the last frame of the movie, I had completely forgotten Jeremy Irons.

Now, of course I haven’t forgotten Irons completely — we’ll always have “Waterland” — but Goode’s portrayal of Charles Ryder in the movie was satisfyingly complete.

Let me explain a bit.

As Louis Bayard points out in the above-linked Salon.com review, the mini-series was as much about seduction as anything else: Charles Ryder is seduced by Oxford, by Sebastian Flyte and his louche circle, by Brideshead itself, by Lady Marchmain, by The Lady Julia Flyte, by Venice…the list is nearly endless. Waugh didn’t try to be subtle, either. Come on — the lissome siblings surnamed “Flyte?” The protagonist called “Ryder?” Not to mention the title…Thomas Wolfe claimed you can’t go home again and we sometimes debate him, but we all know you can’t reclaim your “brideshead,” or innocence.

While Bayard saw this adaptation’s lush trappings as a bit ponderous, I saw them as an attempt to make Brideshead fade beside Goode’s exceedingly cleareyed views. Yes, Bayard is right that this wreaks havoc with the lazy, hazy “all in a golden afternoon” feel of the TV version. But as Lewis Carroll wrote: “Golden lads and girls all must/Like golden creatures, come to dust.” The plot, compacted for film’s sake, heightens the sense of frailty afflicting both England and the Roman Catholic Marchmain family.

Yesterday Matthew Goode was the centerpiece of a NY Times Sunday Magazine “Styles” feature on men’s fall fashions, “A Rogue’s Progress.” In it, he says: “…I’m an Englishman through and through, I guess. My girlfriend, who is English, was living in New York, and I convinced her to move back. I think she was waiting for me to become a man, which I hope I have.’ Goode laughed again. ‘But Englishmen never really grow up, I think. Our teeth go and our bodies may crumble, but we never really change.’”

As I read this paragraph, I wondered…in a world in which London is more “Eastern Promises” than “Brideshead Revisited,” can Englishmen afford to “never really grow up?” I think not, but nevertheless, I think this statement holds a clue to why Goode’s portrayal of a lonely bourgeois drawn in to an aristocratic tangle is so affecting.

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Thank you, Gawker, for alerting me to this TIME.com user-generated-content hot mess. I love the fact that TIME allows readers to ask questions…but thank goodness they then have an editor cherry-pick the questions that are actually given to the author to answer.

(Full disclosure: I did this very thing for the first time back in 2004, for Stephen Covey in an AOL promotion, and believe me, out of the 300-plus questions I received, there were about 100 that sounded as if even KoKo the Gorilla, who once did an AOL Chat, could have put together more coherent queries. Please note that I am comparing KoKo to readers, NOT to the very articulate Mr. Covey.)

However, what truly fascinates me about some of these questions is the fact that someone bothered to ask them at all. Here are som examples:

Posted by Harry Matthew Morsely in LA:

..My question was for the AW&ST story on Jap defense on air-sea and land..It was sorry to hear that, Japan has still on the edge of war anytime soon..I hope Japan and others in Asia has long peace and long freedom and happy..What you say..??..Your Your Sheet..Bye..

Ummmm, OK, Mr. Morsely. Enjoy your vodka!

Then we have the succinct, and stupid:

Posted by tien bischoff in arizona:

ur gay right

No comment.

Then, the truly mystifying:

Posted by Sara Ivry in Brooklyn:

What brand of sneaker do you prefer to run in, and how often do you replace your running shoes?

Ah, I get it…Sara Ivry was trying to force a “run-in” with the author…GROAN.

But my favorite was this reader, who had several questions for Mr. Murakami, all somewhat puzzling:

Posted by Isaiah Lim in Singapore:

How would you own funeral be like?

Posted by Isaiah Lim in Singapore:

If you had children, how would you raise them?

Posted by Isaiah Lim in Singapore:

Why types of limitations are good?

Should we here at Author, Author! ever conduct an open-question interview, I think we’ll monitor the Comments section pretty carefully, LOL.

It’s too bad that, like Gawker, I can’t stop myself from paying attention to these useless questions first, because there were plenty of really interesting and astute questions, too. The reason I feel comfortable ignoring them is because the really good ones will make it to the final interview.

Just one more reason we still need oversight, folks. Web 2.0 (or whatever form 3.0 takes) may allow more voices to be heard, but when it comes to figuring out which voices actually have something to say? Ask an editor.

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For years, I’ve been trying to find book-shaped Christmas ornaments to send to editors and colleagues as little gifts, to no avail. It will be fun to order a bunch of these to have on hand for thank-you prezzies. (I’ve long been a fan of book-themed comestibles. I always coveted that Harry and David “Cookie Book” when I was a kid, and never got one. After I told a bookish friend that several years ago, she surprised me by sending one. Thanks, KCC!) That is, if I can manage to keep them on hand. Chocolate has a way of disappearing in my house…

Last week I wrote about books and wine, but books and chocolate? I’d be hard-pressed to say which is better. I think it just depends on the day, or time of day.

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This morning I was speaking to a colleague who is about to leave for three weeks in Gloucester, and she’s eager to read The Last Fish Tale by Mark Kurlansky. As she should be! Unlike Kurlansky’s famous books Salt and Cod, which focused on commodities through the lens of numerous places, this book focuses on one place using a number of lenses: the fishing industry, immigration, demographics, preserving culture, geography…it’s a fascinating and fully realized portrait of an American place that is beyond sui generis. Gloucester’s separation from the rest of Massachusetts is more than just a canal-cut deep; it’s a place that thrives on being unto itself.

I hope you’ll enjoy watching my interview with Kurlansky. He’s very smart, and his ideas about how Gloucester can survive and thrive in a post-fishing economy have bearings on other places in the U.S., too.

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Most of you probably know, from links or from my bio or from me, that I write a blog for Publishers Weekly called The Book Maven. (That’s my photo from over there; it should be captioned “Once upon a time…”)

This week I seem to have had adaptations on the brain, so I thought I’d share links to my Monday and Tuesday posts from that blog with you.

First, I talked about how I read instead of watched. Then I waxed nostalgic about why I might watch instead of read, just for this upcoming weekend.

How have you been balancing your summer entertainment? Are you reading? Watching? Both? I’d love to hear about what’s getting you through this dreadful heat spell.

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Happy Monday! That’s a “fish tale” in and of itself, isn’t it? Of course, real “fish tales” may be lies in and of themselves, but they’ve always got a great story attached.

However, Mark Kurlansky’s new book, The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America’s Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town holds no lies at all. Kurlansky has written engagingly and beautifully and factually about subjects ranging from the Basque country to salt to cod to the summer of love; the main “fish tale” characteristic of The Last Fish Tale is that there’s a great story attached.

We’ve got ten giveaway copies to hand out to the first ten readers who tell us your last favorite nonfiction read.

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The image to the right, which you can see more easily here, is our “Author, Author!” Wordle. I got the idea to give it whirl from a post on today’s Gawker. Basically, Wordle creates Internet “word clouds” automatically.

You can make a “Wordle” of your own with a blog URL or just a set or words, and customize it by layout, font, and color. This would actually make a fun promotional device…hmmmmmm…

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Yes, Larry King is writing (and talk about using a term loosely; he’ll basically be telling it to journo Cal Fussman) his autobiography. I had to alert readers to this, because if you’re over here, you may never have seen my PW blog, and thus missed one of the great art masterpieces of our time.

So today when I read this piece about King’s upcoming book, I thought: what choice do they have for a cover but this masterpiece? I include it here for your amazement:

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Long, long ago, in a lifetime far, far away, Mr. Bethanne and I lived in a place where it was possible for us to watch French TV. Besides the ever-entertaining (and sadly, long-departed) Apostrophes (and I use the word “entertaining” in its loosest sense), there was a “game show” called Des chiffres et des lettres that tickled our respective funny bones. “Of Numbers and Letters” (as it loosely translates) is the show that the UK based its popular “Countdown” on, and it’s serious Gallic stuff. (Click on that last link for a YouTube video of the nail-biting hilarity. I am not kidding. One of the contestants is actually biting his nails in this clip. Or maybe he’s fondling his mustache.

In honor of Le jour de la Bastille aujord’hui, I would like to develop my very own idea for a game show. It will be called “Les livres et les vins,” or “Books and Wine.” The first episode of this show would have been taped this afternoon, when I realized I didn’t have the book I needed for a review, and since said review is due tomorrow, there would be no frantically calling the long-suffering publicist and begging her to overnight a copy to me (not that I’m saying that has ever happened).

So I high-tailed it to my closest big-box bookstore, which just happens to be next to my closest big-box wine store (and that does not mean the wine is decanted from boxes, although I am sure that is just fine if you have found a brand you like). It turns out the book I’d had slated for review doesn’t come out for several weeks (this too, this is something with which I have absolutely no familiarity whatsoever and has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. Do you hear me, editors?).

I slunk away from the info counter and began perusing the shelves of new fiction. Before I knew it, five books were in one arm and the other one was extended towards the cashier with my credit card.

And I hadn’t even been to the wine store yet!

Don’t you think “Books and Wine” would be a happy, SEO friendly name for a blog? After all, really, one doesn’t need much more. I already have Mr. Bethanne, a bakery that sells excellent baguettes, and a backyard hammock.

You may not find me storming the Bastille today, but you will find me raising a glass of Sauvignon Blanc to the French, whose cultural peculiarities inspired me to create this concept. I’d rather see a bookstore with a wine bar any day than yet another bookstore filled with the fuggy haze of coffee carbons. Vive la France! Vivent les vins! Vivent — toujours — les livres!

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