All Intensive Purposes

The New York Times has launched a new book blog, Paper Cuts, written by Dwight Garner, senior editor of the NYTBR. "A blog about books," says the sub-header. In the first post, he explained:

Paper Cuts will be a daily round-up of news and opinion about books and other printed matter. Make that an almost daily round-up. There won’t be posts on weekends. Or holidays. Or on the mornings after the Book Review’s bimonthly drinks nights at Jimmy’s Corner, a bar in midtown Manhattan.

In the first eight posts, there's some interesting stuff, such as this post about Tony Millionaire's review in The Village Voice of Christopher Hitchens' new book, God Is Not Great, something I might well have otherwise missed. And today there's the news that Chinua Achebe won the Man Booker International Prize.

What there isn't, so far, is any post showing that Dwight Garner has ever read a book himself. I don't know anything about him, and I would hope that you can't become a senior editor of the NYTBR without reading some books, but it seems like a rather crucial omission.