Andre Dubus III's The House of Sand and Fog was probably THE saddest, most wrenching book we ever read. We were hoping his latest, The Garden of Last Days, would be similar in its delicious soul-killing-ness. But Janet Maslin doesn't think so! In her Books of the Times review, she notes that:

“The Garden of Last Days” explores the cultural chasm between Bassam’s world and Spring’s.

A piece in the New York Times' business section today about author Ayn Rand and her economic legacy got us thinking.

We read all of Rand's fiction back in high school, when we were feeling rebellious and anti-establishment and hating on adolescent suburban sheep (even though, duh, we were one of them).

Dear Oprah,

Please stop it.

Now when I recommed Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex to people as one of my favorite coming-of-age novels of all time, they're going to be like, Gag, wasn't that shit on Oprah? Soon you'll put your Oprah Seal of Approval on all the new book pressings. I'll walk into the bookstore and I'll see it.

Sharon, the more active half of Word Up, sent me an email this afternoon about literary hot shit Marisha Pessl, author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and her latest appearance in the New York Times, looking super-sultry in a photo accompanying a piece about, ummm, I guess the paint set her hedge fund manager husband gave her?

Marisha Pessl, literary hotshit of the moment (not according to the Dig) for her debut novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics, wrote an Op-Ed in today’s NYTimes that argues in favor of embracing the nefarious freshman 15. Pack it on, she says, because there’s plenty of time for rules and restraint after you graduate.

Chuck Klosterman: The Ultimate Indie-Yuppie

Ugh, Chuck Klosterman. You're a good writer, you're super-successful, you started out as a nerdy nobody, and you're more obsessed with the minutae of pop-culture ephemera than anyone on earth. We admire all of that. So why do we find you so fucking annoying? It's a dilemma, truly.

How'd we miss this? On Wednesday The Guardian UK ran Lionel Shriver's infuriating diatribe on "vapid" computer-generated book covers. While we're not familiar with the author's work, we've decided to pre-judge and say that we pretty much hate her already. Especially for lines such as these:

This half of Word Up is a little bit consumed with the whole Harry Potter...everything. And we're having serious withdrawal issues this summer since there's no 19438328289 lb. new book to carry around and sink our teeth into. Really, we EAT Harry Potter books. They taste like crumpets. With jam. Jolly good!