In which Omnibus gets a new caretaker

I'm really quite bad at goodbyes, so I'm not going to dwell on the fact that this is my last Omnibus post before I leave ABA for grad school. It's been a lot of fun, and I hope you all have enjoyed it. If you have questions, complaints, or suggestions - any thoughts on Omnibus, really - send them along to estimable editor Dan, who will once again have the blog all to himself.

And now the links.

Way better than a teardown:

"They bought the house next door, added a two-story atrium to bridge the 15-foot gap between the houses, and converted most of the neighbor's house into a two-story library with cherry shelves, a mezzanine, fireplace and a rolling library ladder."

Any other publishers working on this?:

"Random House has kindly arranged a brainstorm meeting tomorrow by phone for some of their staff, several great independent booksellers who want to sell 'multicultural' children's and YA titles, and me." (some of the fruits of that phone call)

You can't separate the evolution of books from the evolution of technology or the evolution of language:

"No media is ever encountered in a vacuum, just as no real revolution happens in one date you can point to on the calendar. We can't talk about a revolution of the book without talking about a revolution of the desk."

Why Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult have a point:

"I was profiled in the New York Times twice. IIRC, both articles included information about my relationship status... the New York Times put Mr. Lippman on the cover of the New York Times magazine. The article was at least 5,000 words. Nowhere in it is there any mention of Mr. Lippman's personal life. By the way, I was personally grateful for that." (see also)

And also:

"If Nick and Jon and Carl don't have to choose between a slot on the review page and a space on the bestseller list, why should Jen and Sophie and Emily?"

And:

"My mother doesn’t read the New York Times Book Review and, despite her daughter’s occupation, doesn’t pay much attention to  the squabbles of the New York intellectual literary establishment. She does read. I would argue she reads seriously. I don’t believe the publishing industry is 'lame' because it hasn’t been able to get her to read more writers like Franzen. I believe the publishing industry, at its core, is accomplishing its job by making sure there is always a book in her hand."

This, too:

"I was going on about some novel I was reading and loving and she cut me off and asked, when was the last time you read fiction by a woman?  And I honestly couldn't come up with anything for a few minutes."

Seems like someone did a find-and-replace, doesn't it?:

"I'm getting a little bit of a kick out of all of these people telling IGCs to concentrate on what they have that the big box stores do not. Why? I can't tell you how many times that people will come in, call, ask a million questions, have our IGC staff write down product names and application rates, diagnose problems, even design entire beds... and then walk out the door. We know that they're heading to the nearest big box, armed with the knowledge from our IGC, to make their purchases from a big box store that offers much more attractive prices than we can."