Over at Time, Lev Grossman throws in on the whole Alain de Botton versus Caleb Crain and Alice Hoffman versus everyone who does not love her unconditionally controversies. Unsurprisingly for Grossman and for Time magazine, the piece is maddeningly equanimous, but it's still worth a read:

I write fewer pans than I used to. Readers actually egg you on to do it — you always get a bunch of fan mail after you seriously whale on someone — but unless the writer is sufficiently established that he or she can take the hit, with hit points to spare, it just feels mean. (I have a certain amount of luxury in this regard, since I'm a staff reviewer and can pick and choose a bit. Freelance reviewers who get assigned things don't have it that easy.) Reviews have a much longer and more public life-span now than they used to, because of Google.

But more interestingly, Grossman links to a blogger who made reference to Alain de Botton's wealthy background and suggested that he didn't want to read his new book. de Botton exchanged e-mails with the blogger soon after, demanding that he take down the post:

Your latest blog makes my blood boil....I don't know what you think you're doing writing such blogs other than adding to the not already inconsiderable sum of human misery. If you've got any honesty or sincerity, you'll take the post down immediately and if you've got a trace of courage, you'll reply to this email and confront me as one person.

Also, de Botton invokes the names of Tolstoy (in reference to himself) and Goebbels (in reference to his critic). How much do you want to bet that his next book is going to be about how much people suck on the internet? Wait, that's already been done. Better luck next time on catching the outrage train, de Botton; it's left the station without you.

If you're new around these parts, here is the deal: I bring reader's copies of books to Slog Happy and give them away to Slog Commenters, who then write book reviews for all of us to enjoy.

Slog Commenter Gayballs picked up a book that he liked, and he wants to share it with you. Any errors or unclear passages you may find in this review are not Gayballs's fault; they are the fault of the editor. I am the editor.

There's really only one thing about Aaron Gwyn's The World Beneath that bothers me, and I'll take a moment to get it out of the way— it seems like a modern fiction cliche to have the story's hero be traumatized by something that happened to them when they were younger. The death of a child by being run over, the death of a wife by fire, the death a little brother by drowning, the discovery of an artifact-collecting grandfather in the middle of an old-people orgy/sex ritual, etc. Each hero is haunted by what they've seen or whatever else life has dealt them, and it has a tendency to inform their decisions for the rest of the book. It also has a tendency for flashback-making. The World Beneath is rife with references to the traumatic past.

The World Beneath is about a few different things, all of which revolve around regret, holes in the ground, and Native American myths. There are three characters whose stories are told; each of them is broken in a different way because of their traumas. JT, a half-Mexican half-Chickasaw loner, is obsessed with going underground to be with his dead father. Sheriff Martin blames himself for his little brother's death and spends his entire life trying to make good on that, and Hickson Creed fought in the first Gulf War and is suffering from PTSD. The story flashes back and forth between two different time lines and JT's own narration of some of the important events in his own life, and all three character's lives intersect.

The World Beneath is a relatively short, spare story that sadly, loses some of steam as it moves forward but still is a story very much worth your time. This is Aaron Gwyn's first novel, and I'm looking forward to the second.

Many thanks to Gayballs. If you'd like to send in a book report, you can e-mail me here.

Yesterday, Penguin UK laid off 100 people. Today, Virgin Books informed their authors that they would not be releasing new titles from their Black Lace or Nexus lines in 2010. Black Lace and Nexus are Virgin book's erotic fiction lines.

Ask any bookseller: If you can't sell erotica, something is very, very wrong. There are seemingly always more bearded, balding men on the tippy edge of middle age just waiting to skulk around in the erotica section before finally buying a copy of Spanking Vixens from the hottest, youngest lady bookseller in the store.

Meanwhile, The American Society of Shitcanned Media Elites is considering a stimulus plan of their own, to pick up the freelancing world by its bootstraps: They could possibly be planning to wear pants on Friday, July 10th.

We have two Elizabeths reading tonight.

Out in West Seattle, Elizabeth Austen and Erin Malone read poems about motherhood. Austen is the author of My Uterus, That Party Balloon. Malone is the author of What Sound Does It Make, which is about post-partum life.

And University Book Store hosts Elizabeth Bear, who is a sci-fi author who was written over a dozen novels and several dozens of short stories. I'm not a fan of sci-fi series in general, but I enjoy Bear's standalone novels and her short stories quite a bit. There's a list of her short fiction, with many links to free online copies of stories, here. Try a couple of them and see if they work for you. If so, stop by for the reading. This is the reading of the night.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.