Over at Comics Worth Reading, JoAnna Draper Carlson asks if DC should be let off the hook for finding such a small percentage of women to work on a line targetted at a female audience.

But I can only imagine what the press would do if the Logo channel, targeted at gays, had over 85% of their shows created by straights. Perhaps that’s not a fair example, given that gays already get a lot of Hollywood work, and the same can’t be said about women in comics. How many black creators does BET have? How many black actors are represented on that network? I know Lifetime has a ton of visible females.

In short, how do you talk to a target audience if you’re not allowing members of that audience to speak?

And while I still think a man can write a decent YA story for girls, I have to say - the lady makes a strong point.

Jon Katz on the dog that changed his life and led him to move to the country and become an author. (I didn't expect this article to end like it did, but I adore Katz.)

Time Out NY reviews The End of Mr. Y and is impressed:

Soaked in Heidegger and Derrida references, chaos theory and quantum physics, what follows is itself something of a thought experiment. Ariel breathlessly pursues the “what ifs?” whose answers govern our reality, teasing out a conclusion that, while nimbly detangling several plot strands, leaves others tantalizingly unresolved. Like the novel within her novel, Thomas’s Mr. Y burrows into the reader’s brain, stoking a desire for real-world exploration.

It's a really tough book and does slow down a bit here and there but I'm so impressed by what Thomas is trying with her writing - in the places she dares to go. She really blows me away.

Okay, I'm sorry but this is not only snobbish, but also bitchy:

This year, I was a judge. What that means is that between the beginning of May and the middle of August, I (and my four fellow judges) read 258 books. Each. The same 258 novels. To put that in perspective, it's pertinent to note that outside of a Bible and a phone book, many households in the United States probably own (and read) zero works of serious fiction.

If I ever cared about the National Book Awards, I'm done now. If this is who judges then I want no part. (I can't resist adding this part as well:

Judge No. 4, an admitted friend of Roth's, had another favorite — "Only Revolutions" by Mark Danielewski, which none of the rest of us could fathom but he would not give up on. We began to know that in every conference call No. 4 would speak at length and very movingly in support of the book, and I finally said, "If Danielewski had written the novel you're describing, he'd deserve a Nobel, but I can't find a wormhole into that experience on the page."

I'm sure Danielewski is just thrilled to have this low opinon spread all over LA and the internet.)

Gail Gauthier goes after this Rachel Cooke business on lit bloggers destroying the world (or some such nonsense). Gail makes some interesting points and is certainly worth reading.

And courtesy FEMA, Kafka comes to the Gulf Coast victims of Katrina. Sometimes, I really hate how this country works. (Or doesn't work as in this case.)