Book Beast

This summer I became a big fan of the political website The Daily Beast. More recently they've revealed that their bookishness comes from more than just taking their name from an Evelyn Waugh novel. They've added a new section Book Beast devoted to book coverage, and it's not reviews. It's literary controversies, and examinations of what specific people are reading. They've just run a segment of book recommendations from the Oscar Nominated Director of Doubt John Patrick Shanley. I'm very excited by this turn of events, first because I think that celebrities are in a unique position to foster literacy, since so many people are fascinated by them to begin with, and second because it bodes well for the kind of interesting book related tidbits that can be expected in the future from Tina Brown's new website.