Book News, In Brief

Newspapers' billion$ have become Craigslist's million$. Click here for The Business Insider's charting of old media's demise.


Related: In an effort to keep afloat, major newspapers are now selling ad space on their front pages. Click here to see The LATimes' Friday headline ad for HBO's True Blood.


Semi-related, in that it involves a newspaper: Sick and tired of being dismissed as "the liberal media," Sunday's NYTimes gave a left-field shout-out to Right Wing magazines The American Conservative, Commentary and National Review. While the attempt was admirable, it sorta reminded me of when my parents used to try and talk to me about hiphop. In a word, forced.


Even less related...although it does involve the far, far Right: The Guardian UK has a disturbing write-up about a group of "Christians" in Wisconsin who are suing for the right to burn a library book. The plaintiffs claim that Francesca Lia Block's Baby Be-Bop, -- a Gay, teen novel -- damaged their "mental and emotional well-being." This follows a failed campaign by these same folks to restrict library access to any teen-oriented books they deemed sexually explicit. Nice!


Completely unrelated to the first news item, but totally and unequivocally related to the last: Dale Lazarov was a short story fiction writer until a few years ago, when comics artist Steve MacIsaac caught him in a weak moment and convinced him to try his hand at comics. Since then, Lazarov has gone on to produce the wordless, "carnal yet sweet," gay erotic comic, Sticky, with MacIsaac, and the similarly silent and flawlessly drawn, Manly, with Amy Colburn. Anyway, the point of all this is to get you interested in Lazarov enough to check out his interview with The Comics Reporter. Remember when I wrote about "Charming Cheesecake" last week? Lazarov's work is Charming Beefcake.