the nine who like you will tell one

My experience has been that the old adage from sales very much relates to current ratings and reviews of books. For every ten customers, the nine who like your product will likely tell one person each whereas the one person who dislikes your goods or services may well tell ten people. For ratings and reviews, readers often react in a similar manner although online visibility can lead to far more distortion than word of mouth. It is not only for this reason that I am grateful for last week's five-star review.

syllabi and student assignments

"There’s something confusing about the consensus around [Cyrus Duffleman]. It has to do with the way [his] critics begin by asserting [his] goodness, [his] greatness, [his] majorness or [his] bestness, and then quickly adopt a defensive tone, instructing us in ways of seeing as virtues the many things about [his] writing that might be considered shortcomings. So [he] writes only [syllabi and student assignments], but [these] are [weirder] than most novels."

~~ from "Poor Rose" by Christian Lorentzen

Wagner in Africa

In Granta's "Wagner in Africa," James Pogue writes from Central African Republic.

Mike Schmidt and Richie Ashburn

"On the radio on the way home, [Rabbit Angstrom] hears that Mike Schmidt, who exactly two years ago, on April 18, 1987, slugged his five hundredth home run, against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Three Rivers Stadium, is closing in on Richie Ashburn's total of 2,217 hits to become the hittingest Phillie ever. Rabbit remembers Ashburn. One of the Whiz Kids who beat the Dodgers for the pennant the fall Rabbit became a high-school senior. Curt Simmons, Del Ennis, Dick Sisler in center, Stan Lopata behind the plate. Beat the Dodgers the last game of the season, then lost to the Yankees four straight. In 1950 he was seventeen and had led the county B league with 817 points his junior season."

~~ from Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

Teju Cole on John Updike

"Had John Updike been African, he would have won the Nobel prize twenty years ago."

Alice Munro

John Barth, Paul Auster, Alice Munro—who's next?

And who did we forget so soon?