http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/201001b.htm#qc7
I think that Orthofer is quite right to say that "The death of the slush pile...will just accelerate the move to self-publishing (and, indeed, self-published books already form a new sort of slush pile, from which conventional publishers occasionally pluck out something), and leave great opportunities for nimbler small publishers who actually care what they put their imprint-name on." I also think that, as "mainstream media" abandons the professional reviewing function, this will put great responsibility on "amateur" reviewers to sift the "slush pile" of self-publications in order to bring what is worthy to attention. We've all got a lot of work to do, folks!
Blake Morrison at The Guardian reviews Antonia Fraser's memoir of her life with Harold Pinter. Theirs was one of the more high-powered and interesting literary pairings of modern times, since it's not a match that would have occurred to anyone as obvious -- yet it seems to have worked.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/16/must-you-go-fraser-review
A Journey Round My Skull offers a delightful visual survey of French children's book illustrations from the 1900-1949 period:
http://ajourneyroundmyskull.blogspot.com/2010/01/attack-of-pink-butterflies-french-kids.html
Among notables born on this date are poets Austin Dobson, Jon Stallworthy, and Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), American statesman Daniel Webster, French political philosopher Montesquieu, children's writer A.A. Milne, British lexicographer Peter Mark Roget, film directors John Boorman and Takeshi Kitano, French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, French composer Emmanuel Chabrier, German novelist Arno Schmidt, actors Oliver Hardy, Danny Kaye, Kevin Costner, and Cary Grant, and Maryland governor (and former Baltimore mayor) Martin O'Malley. O'Malley is unquestionably the only governor who fronts a Celtic rock band, O'Malley's March. He is also, if I may indulge myself, a distinctly handsome politician:
