Link Soup

I’ve been struggling with a cough and sore throat for nearly three weeks now. At first, I thought that it would go away on its own, and continued work on my revisions. That didn’t work so well, so in between printing out portions of my book, I chugged cough syrup, and drank green tea, and even took that horrid Zinc that Alex swears by. Nothing worked. So now I’m trying a different approach: rest. That means I will have to bow out early today, though not before pointing out a couple of worthwhile links:

• The Morning News’ Tournament of Books has entered Round Two, and the first match up pits Roth’s The Plot Against America with Boyle’s The Inner Circle. The judge is Maud Newton.
• The Rake has a great report about Michael Chabon’s talk at the University of Denver. “Chabon is the picture of the perfect college roommate-if you brought him home for Thanksgiving, he’d charm the hell out of your parents,” he says. The charming man talked about the genesis of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.
• Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land has gotten a lot of attention from blogs and so Mark tracked the sales rank of the novel to see if there was any effect. Short answer: yes.

The one and only Randa Jarrar takes over tomorrow and every Friday here at Moorishgirl. I will be back at the helm on Monday.