Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

In ShelfAwareness, there was the following quote from Richard Cohen writing in the Washington Post.
The book is warm. The book is handy. The book is handsome to the eye. The book occupies the shelf of the owner and is a reflection of him or her or, actually, me. The book is always there, to be reached for, to be thumbed and, too often I admit, to wonder about: Why did I buy this? My bookcase is full of mysteries. . . . I asked a bookseller in New York to recommend a brilliant but unheralded book, and he went through his shelves and picked out several, none of which I had ever heard of. *Her Privates We *was one of them. The Hemingway blurb sold me. No digital anything can do that.”–
To which I say, really? No one on the internet, through emails, through online discourse, ever convinced you to read a book? That says far more about Richard Cohen than it says about the efficacy of the internet as a medium through which books can be promoted and sold. Guess what, even blurbs appear on the internet, particularly when they are quoted on the front …

Dear Ms Charlotte Allen, offering of an op ed piece at Washington Post:

If I had a subscription to the WashPo, I’d probably cancel it today. When I first read your article , I thought it was going to be a joke. I had to read it twice to see if you just weren’t pulling my leg because, seriously, who writes this sort of thing with a straight face:

The theory that women are the dumber sex — or at least the sex that gets into more car accidents — is amply supported by neurological and standardized-testing evidence. Men’s and women’s brains not only look different, but men’s brains are bigger than women’s (even adjusting for men’s generally bigger body size). The important difference is in the parietal cortex, which is associated with space perception….