Here Comes the Weekend

• Two months ago, I made note of the lengthy review Amazon had given Mackenzie Bezos' The Testing of Luther Albright. Since then, the first-time novelist's gotten some excellent notices, from folks like Kate Bolick of NYTBR, that don't even mention her family connection to Amazon. The hometown paper isn't so genteel: Seattle Post-Intelligence book man John Marshall gets her talking about that and her background in Princeton's creative writing program...I'm going to have to see if Jennifer Weiner can give me some good gossip on that front!

• Roxana Robinson wrote about "women's fiction" in last Sunday's Chicago Tribune, but the way she described romances and thrillers along the way rankled M. J. Rose, who made the case for genre fiction, aiming to refute the idea that "thrillers are every bit as shallow as romances: They're just as simplistic, just as formulaic and, just as often, poorly written." I think the key there is "just as often," which isn't the same as "always." And, I think, it's time to let out the dirty little secret: so-called literary fiction can be just as simplistic, formulaic, and poorly written, too. I should know--I'm judging some for the Litblog Co-op this week!