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Thanks to pressure from corporate owners and shareholders eager to turn a quick profit, newspapers in recent years have been cutting back or eliminating their book review coverage. Their main excuse: not enough advertising from publishers to support the reviews. But manufacturers of sporting equipment don’t advertise either, and I see little cutback in the sports pages.

Just last week the Los Angeles Times folded its book review section into an opinion section , although editor David Ulin argued in his editor’s note that these were  changes “to forge a synthesis between print and online content that will allow us not only to maintain our commitment to engaged reviews and criticism but also to expand the very nature of our books coverage.”

Also last week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution eliminated its book reviewer position but did “generously” permit its reviewer, Teresa Weaver, to apply for another position at the newspaper. Fed up with the increasing erosion of book coverage, the National Book Critics Circle has launched a campaign to save book reviews, including a petition to save AJC’s well-regarded book review section, and a new series on the NBCC’s blog Critical Mass that will feature posts by concerned writers, interviews with book editors, and more.

So put down that book you are reading, get off your couch, and turn on that computer. Join the over 1000 authors (including Ian Rankin, Richard Powers, and Michael Connolly), editors, librarians, and booklovers in signing this petition. Save the Book Review!

Did you know that Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk and other spiritual memoirs, once reviewed for Library Journal? Or that our primary reviewer of Westerns was a nun, the rootin’ tootin’ Sister Avila Lamb (”no sex or cussin’; violence okay”). Our reviewers are a talented bunch of active and retired librarians, college professors, and freelance writers. And many of them write books as well. The latest to be published is Seattle Public Library’s own  Jeff Ayers, whose Voyages of the Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion was released last November by Pocket Books .

There is a nice interview with Jeff in the Seattle Times. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. In the meantime, I’m keeping Jeff busy reviewing the latest thrillers, another passion of Jeff’s.

April 22 is Earth Day. Appropriately enough the Santa Monica Public Library and the City of Santa Monica’s Environmental Programs Division is sponsoring a new literary award that aims to ”commend authors, illustrators, and publishers who produce quality books for adults and young people that make significant contributions to, support the ideas of, and broaden public awareness of sustainability”. The Green Prize for Sustainable Literature will be awarded in September 2007 in the categories of adult fiction, adult nonfiction, youth fiction and  youth nonfiction.

Books published in the United States during the 2006 calendar year are eligible for the prize but publishers must hurry to submit their candidates as the deadline is April 30! And this means you, Abrams publicists! One book that sprang immediately to mind as an excellent candidate in the nonfiction adult category is Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21 Century (Abrams, 2006).

Edited by environmentalist  Alex Stephens of the popular blog worldchanging.com, ”this beautifully designed volume (which comes with its own slipcover)”, as LJ reviewer editor Irwin Weintraub raved in a LJ Xpress review last December, “collects ideas and workable solutions from more than 60 contributors that demonstrate the human potential to create a better future and a sustainable planet.” 

While this volume meets the the prize’s basic sustainability criteria (future and long-term oriented, awareness of ecological and resource limitations, regional and global in scope,etc.), the sponsors of this award  strangely forgot to include sustainable requirements for the nominees’ physical production, such as  requesting that a certain percentage of the submitted title  be printed on recycled paper or on paper that comes from environmentally managed forests (see “Harry Potter Goes Green”). Fortunately, Worldchanging is ahead of the game, having been printed on environmentally friendly  New Leaf Paper. And the publisher went one step further by purchasing wind power credits equivalent to the amount of electricity used to produce the book.

Ernest Hemingway, who sometimes fancied himself a macho pugilist, has nothing on Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa in the boxing department. Check out the shiner he gave Columbian novelist Gabriel García Márquez in 1976.

For full sordid details on the literary fisticuffs between the former best friends, check out today’s New York Times.

I know we review editors are supposed to judge books by the quality of their prose, but call me shallow, I love this cover! I love the retro-Art Deco Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers/Metropolis feel. And the back cover is great too, featuring hands pulling on bright teal-blue gloves against a bright comic-book yellow background.

The comic book reference is no accident for Soon I Will Be Invincible (Pantheon, June) is a first novel by video game designer Austin Grossman following the adventures of evil Doctor Impossible, a failed wannabe world dominator, and Femme, a female cyborg/rookie superhero.  And the jacket’s designer? None other than the legendary graphic designer and Knopf associate art director Chip Kidd, who has his own passion for superheros like Superman. For a full overview of  his work see his Chip Kidd: Work 1986-2006.

Last week sister magazine Publishers Weekly launched its newly redesigned website, including a new blog from its book review editors. (Don’t worry: our new website is coming shortly.)  Although we all work on the same floor, our busy editing and production schedules keep us from interacting on a personal level as often as we would like. So I am enjoying reading Kevin Howell’s personal trauma of reading 16 gay romances (who knew there was such a category!) for the Lambda Book Awards and Jonathan Seguera’s wry interpretation of bold new voices in fiction.(not!). 

My only minor quibble: the blog’s name: Notes from the Bookroom. Hello, we were here first! On the other hand, it’s not easy coming up with a unique blog name. (One LJ editor still thinks our name sucks.) Although titles can’t be copyrighted, fellow LJ book review editor Heather McCormack and I had a brief fantasy of duking it out with the PW editors for the ”bookroom” rights in the grand tradition of Will Ferrell’s Anchor Man news team rumble (Public Television: no commercials, no mercy!). Heather, you bring the trident, I’ll bring the net!

Check out the clip on YouTube.

Fortunately, cooler heads have prevailed and I say welcome fellow bloggers. The more we can join forces to promote the written word, the better the world will be.

In light of today’s rapid technological advances, the future of the printed book is constantly debated. But think about those poor medieval monks whose beloved illuminated scrolls were replaced by those new-fangled books. How did you open those damn things? Check out the hilarious results at http://youtube.com/watch?v=aX0-nqRmtos .  And anyone who has called their company’s IT department for assistance in turning on their new computer can relate.

Continuing on a Southern theme, today is Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), the final day to let the good times roll before the Lenten season brings all celebrations to a halt for 40 days. (As a child in a small Alabama town, my mother was often denied a birthday party because her April 7 birthday usually fell during Lent.) While everyone thinks New Orleans is the birthplace of Mardi Gras, the first celebrations actually took place in the port city of Mobile, Alabama in 1703. N.O. was a johnny-come-lately to the party in 1853.  Mardi Gras means food, lots of delicious food, and if you want to sample some of Mobile’s specialties, check out Bay Tables: A Collection of Recipes from the Junior League of Mobile. Of course, if crayfish dip doesn’t appeal to you, try some of the unusual dishes concocted at the Girl Scouts Tombigbee Council’s Celebrity Chef Cookie Challenge in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The key ingredient was a box of Girl Scout cookies. Winning recipes included Girls Night Out Lemon Chicken Casserole with Girl Scouts Lemonade Cookies and Peanut Butter and Jelly Pie. Bon appetit!

     As the saying goes, everyone loves a winner—except, it seems, when it comes to book awards, which can be notable for the amount of naysaying they inspire. So at this late date, having finally overseen the completion of LJ’s best books list for the January issue (check out this blog in the coming weeks for some backstory), I have the time to reflect on last month’s National Book Awards.

     No naysaying this time; I’m perfectly content with the winners. What’s more interesting to me are the criss-crossing lines among the adult trophy bearers. While Timothy Egan’s nonfiction The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl is notable for its story telling, Richard Powers’s fiction winner, The Echo Maker, is the fluid and engaging account of what happens when a story gets interrupted—when, after an accident, a young man cannot put the pieces back together correctly. And Nathaniel Mackey’s poetry winner, Splay Anthem, which blends two ongoing series to consider ancient African cosmology, is essentially social history reimagined. 

     Sometimes fiction readers can’t be persuaded to read nonfiction, and creative writing doesn’t always engage lovers of history or biography, but with this trio I can see readers crossing lines. It’s not the proverbial something for everyone but everything for everyone. In the end, my one big disappointment with this year’s NBAs came with the news coverage, which as always slighted the poetry winner; one story I read didn’t even mention Mackey. The assumption seems to be that the average reader finds poetry just too abstruse—hardly true of much poetry published today and certainly not true of Splay Anthem, a rhythmically rich work as addictive as any toe-tapping score. More readers should try it—and more cultural editors at newspapers nationwide should try giving poetry the light it deserves. Or else we’ll all be losers.