My alarmist trend continues: according to a Russian professor, here’s what the US will splinter into somewhere in 2010 (from the Wall Street Journal):

100 skills every man should know. And if you don’t know it, they have a brief description to get you started. (Not sure when in this day and age your average Joe would ever need to know how to sweat copper, but there it is.)

My good friend from graduate school has gotten together a fancy website here, on which you can find a gorgeous picture of me and an embarrassing-but-much-appreciated shout-out. Not sure how long Chris has been blogging there, but I’m glad to know about his site now. Mark my words: we will see good things from Chris, beginning with his story “Light, Sweet Crude,” which won this year’s Playboy College Fiction Contest. A permanent link to his blog is on the sidebar for future reading.

About once a year I’ll get fired up about sending stuff out and will take a look at my book and say, “Let’s do this.” This year I stumbled onto this interview with agent Nat Sobel in POETS & WRITERS, as well as this article Sobel wrote about what hooks him as an agent. I also stumbled onto this POETS & WRITERS interview with Chuck Adams, an editor for Algonquin. All three of these links are inspiring and informative and lead to the same conclusion about the business: write well, think long-term, be professional, and be persistent. Ask me in twenty years if that strategy works.

Jeffrey Toobin’s book about the Supreme Court is a fascinating read. He focuses on the nine members of the Rehnquist court in the 1990s, characterizing each with something like a fiction writer’s sensibility. The real heart of the book concerns the aftermath to the Warren court, which made a series of progressive rulings between Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and Roe v. Wade in 1983. Toobin shows how conservatives, particularly the religious right, have tried to swing the court in the other direction in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade and restore the right of religious expression in public. And Republican presidents did in fact appoint most of the members in the Rehnquist court, though the court remained a fairly moderate voice (Toobin credits O’Connor with having fingers on the pulse of moderate America). The book ends with the appointments of Roberts and Alito, and, though Toobin leaves political discussions aside, the reader is left with the sense that the next president’s appointments will have a real and lasting effect on American law. A well-researched and engrossing book.

I’m going to start a Hornby style column: books bought, books read. Of my fall reading, I didn’t finish IN THE FALL or start FEAST OF SNAKES, but I’ll probably get to the Crews eventually. Meanwhile, I’m excited by a full winter, beginning with books for Key West. I’m in a historical fiction workshop, which requires advanced reading of Pat Barker’s REGENERATION, which I’ve read but not closely enough to discuss intelligently in two weeks. It also requires reading of another historical novel from one of the seminar participants, so I’ve picked Russell Banks’ CLOUDSPLITTER, a historical epic told from John Brown’s son.

I’ve got Peter Taylor’s A SUMMONS TO MEMPHIS on the shelf, which Emily loved, and I’ve been meaning to pick up some William Styron and Larry Brown’s last one, A MIRACLE OF CATFISH. Marilyn Robinson’s new one, HOME, looks good, but I’d like to read GILEAD first, and I’d also like to read some more Annie Proulx–POSTCARDS and the last story, “Tits Up in a Ditch,” from her new collection. The most exciting-looking book I’ve got on my shelf is Robert Stone’s A FLAG FOR SUNRISE, and I’m still scouring bookstores for a copy of DOG SOLDIERS. Should be a good season.