Jason Pettus of the intriguing website the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLP) has picked my collection Psychological Methods to Sell Must Be Destroyed for his list of best experimental books of 2008. There are some interesting-looking books mentioned, and I’m pretty happy about showing up on a list with M.John Harrison.

I first came across CCLP after I read Jack O’Connell’s The Resurrectionist, a book that had some fine writing but ultimately disappointed me. I was curious what people were saying about it and looked at reviews on Goodreads.com.  Jason Pettus’s review echoes some of the problems I had with the book, and so I clicked on the link to his website, where the review had originally appeared. I looked around the site briefly, planning to return when I had more time. Some weeks later I was looking at a post–on a blog, but I don’t remember which blog—about writer’s problems with reviewers. I clicked on a link to David Louis Edelman’s blog post on standards that a review should follow. The post ended with mentions of some reviews of his novel that reflected these standards, one of which was from CCLP.

After reading Edelman’s post I went back to CCLP, looked around some more, and queried about sending a review copy of Psychological Methods to Sell Must Be Destroyed, and was pleased with the ensuing thoughtful and intelligent, review.

Besides book reviews, CCLP collects interesting photographs from various sources (for example here), and also links to news reports, etc., with commentary.

I don’t have a lot of time for reading blogs (or writing one), but CCLP is one I try to visit often.