Leann Shapton’s new novel, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry, is - to use the author’s words - “a love story told through an auction catalog.” That is, the novel is completely in the form of an auction catalog for a couple’s belongings.

This reminds me of a novel from a few years ago, Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects by Christopher Miller, that takes the form of liner notes to an imaginary 4-CD set.

I’m sure there are other entries in this unrecognized genre - novels that take the form of a non-novel, even nonfictional, publication - but I’m blanking at the moment.

Bookslut points us to an article by novelist and political commentator James Dellingpole: “Whisper it: you don’t need to have read John Updike.” The main point about not feeling bad because you haven’t read every work, or even every writer, in the canon is a good one, but I really like his final thoughts:

All novels are flawed, that’s the whole point. Dickens goes on a bit as – my, and how! – does George Eliot; War and Peace ends with 100 pages of rambling, esoteric spiritual drivel; Proust badly needs pruning; Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer aren’t great prose stylists.

As a novelist it’s the first – and most depressing – thing you learn about your trade: that between the sweeping ambition of your conception and the reality of your execution there will always be a terrifyingly large gulf. All novels, even the greatest ones, are failures. It’s just that most readers are too polite to notice.