Bit of Love from Barnes & Noble

Not too terribly long ago, Barnes & Noble.com started Barnes & Noble Review a weekly web magazine featuring reviews of books, CDs, DVDs, etc. Pretty interesting strategy—rather than compete with Amazon on price, provide compelling editorial content. B&N has attracted a nice line of reviewers, including John Freeman (former NBCC president and new American editor of Granta) and Christopher Byrd.

And more relevant to this post, they’re also covering some great books, including a few Open Letter titles.

Last week, Bragi Olafsson’s The Pets was featured on the Best Fiction of the Year list and was plugged by Paul La Farge:

The best short novel I’ve read this year must be Bragi Ólafsson’s The Pets, which makes more room for strangeness in its 157 pages than most novels can find in two or three times that length. [. . .] Ólafsson, who used to play bass in Björk’s band The Sugarcubes, handles the absurdity of the situation with a droll matter-of-factness that’s reminiscent of Murakami, but as the story goes on the drollery gives way to a subtle menace. A catastrophe is about to happen, and the question is, will Emil be able to prevent it, or will he be trapped by his own cowardice? Small, dark, and hard to put down, The Pets may be a classic in the literature of small enclosed spaces—a distinguished genre, which includes “The Metamorphosis,” No Exit, and a fair amount of Beckett.

In the brand new issue, Nobody’s Home by Dubravka Ugresic is reviewed by the aforementioned Christopher Byrd:

Abreast with this endeavor, she also looks into how globalization has affected, what the stalwarts of the Frankfurt School termed, the culture industry. For instance, in the essay “Transition: Morphs & Sliders & Polymorphs,” she notes, “Only in times ruled by firm, frozen values—political, religious, moral aesthetic, has the writer enjoyed . . . a special status. . . .Today, in…market-oriented cultural zones—an intellectual is simply a ‘player’ . . . a performer, a circus performer, an entertainer, a vendor of ‘cultural’ souvenirs.” Following this idea to its logical endpoint, one wonders, does the author factors herself into her own indictment? She does. While tallying the ills of civilization, Ugrešić avoids coming across as remote or above the fray. Indeed, alongside engaging in forceful cultural readings, she discourses on things like gardening and the pleasure of having one’s nails done. In sum, her provocative bent is not cheapened by her unmitigated desire to please.