Some Newton and the Counterfeiter news.

One or more “Diary of a Trade Book” updates tomorrow, hopefully with some not-quite-so-self-absorbed blogging as well.  But here, I’ll indulge in the height of self-aggrandizement, noting and thanking recent reviewers of Newton and the Counterfeiter.

Sean Carroll over at Cosmic Variance weighed in yesterday with this very generous reading.  Click the link for perhaps my favorite review title of the lot, so far.

Over at Bookreporter.com, Robert Finn had more nice things to say this afternoon.

And sneaking in at the end of the work day/start of the long weekend Tim F. over at Balloon Juice — which is, as readers of this blog know, one of the prime sources for high grade dissection of the follies of daily political life — just posted one of those notices writers print out, clutch to their chests, and then start to giggle.  He got the book; he liked the information; and he loved the revealing strangeness that first got me into the project four years ago:  Isaac Newton, a cop?

A bunch of other sites have been taking note as well.  I’ll miss several — but one of the great things about Sean’s posting was the way it bounced through corners of the blogosphere, from 3quarksdaily to Maud Newton and beyond.  Some folks I know as regular readers here have taken notice too, including several who seem to be following the diary series.

All of this is great, and I’m grateful to every reader who finds something useful or pleasurable (hopefully both) in my work, whether the blog, any of my books, one of my docs or whatever.

But here I’ll just close out with a thought I’m going to develop in one of my next couple of Diary of a Trade Book entries.  That is, while I’ve got a significant zone of disagreement (along with some definite assent) with Bora’s sustained critique of the MSM and emphasis on the disintermediation of media, you can really see what he’s talking about here in the book trade.  (Sorry for the Latinate monstrousities in the previous sentence. I spent part of my day in earnest discussion of literature in the academy and I haven’t fully flushed the jargon yet.)

I’ll flesh the thought out tomorrow, but broadly speaking, the old print reviewing apparatus is in terrible shape, which means that for anything but radical conservative blather, which can be endlessly trumpeted through the right-wing blabosphere, and a relatively small number of serious writers who’ve tripped over into broad recognition, getting the word out on most books has become an even more haphazard affair that it ever was.

And what I’m seeing as more and more folks with blog platforms take notice of Newton and the Counterfeiter, is that we are not as far off as I thought from the creation of a writing-and-reading community that may well be able to sustain itself and those of its members who are producing new work, in ways that the MSM can no longer.  And though I loathe the trope of pat tag lines, I have to say that after a couple of weeks of despond, I do, after this latest round, know some hope.  (Apologies, and a little snark, to Mr. Sullivan.)

Explore posts in the same categories: good books, Isaac Newton, Newton and the Counterfeiter, Self-aggrandizement