And in news that has nothing to do with the redesign of this site

There's some neat stuff going on out there.

Conversational Reading posts some good thoughts on a piece in which Ben Marcus swats at Jonathan Franzen, and some good thoughts on a New York Review of Books piece on Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (sparking good comments in the process). On that topic, Return of the Reluctant points out that Never Let Me Go has survived glorious combat to make it to the Man Booker Shortlist; though I'm rooting for Ishiguro's book totally by default, I'm still rooting for it with great and mighty vigor, because it was an awesome book. There's a conversation going on between Tingle Alley and Rake's Progress at Tingle Alley on Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper, which book I'm reading now, so I'm saving the conversation for later. The Lit Blog Co-up is gearing up for their next Read This! nomination--if they act in response to the uproar over their last choice, this quarter's selection is going to be written in Sanskrit. Booksquare sends us scurrying toward a fun article on experiencing art in repetition; ideally, I'd love to be reading books multiple times, but, dammit, there's too many books I haven't read once, yet. And finally, Maud Newton points us towards some tits.

In Cleveland news, there's a good conversation going on at Brewed Fresh Daily (starting here and wandering to here before winding up here) about, uh, something. I'm still not really sure what it's all about, but it's been fun to read along. Something to do with someone who wants to re-tech Cleveland, or something. I dunno. Check it out and if you figure it all out, clue me in, because I feel like I should know what's going on.

Finally, for you Cleveland people, if you're for some reason on a hunger strike waiting for the release of the next bits in the 76 Brief Views of Cleveland series, you're probably either very pissed off at me, or you're dead. I hope you're just pissed off at me--I don't want to have your foolish hunger strikes hanging over my head. I do have at least four more slated, I've just gotten all crazy lazy, and haven't written them yet. But know I haven't quit yet. So, you know. Have a cracker or something.