My review of Pinetop Seven's new disc, The Night's Bloom is up today at PopMatters. It usually takes me a while to get reviews filed because I procrastinate, but in this case, I simply wanted to keep listening to the record before putting my thoughts down. It's awfully good, fulfilling the promise of the band's past work in wonderful ways. It's a shoo-in for my top 10, which I'll post here over the weekend.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal today has an interesting piece on the recent spate of trivia books. In it, Robert Hughes writes about what are coming to be known as "significa" and "information art" books. He rightly points out that this is nothing new -- small gift books with otherwise meaningless facts and figures are a staple of Christmas stocking stuffers, and things like The Book of Lists have been around since the 1970s.

Though Ben Schott is mentioned, the British writer whose Schott's Miscellany seemed to kick off the current market saturation (with a not-so-subtle nod to the design aesthetic of Dave Eggers and his McSweeney's empire) does not really get his due. In fact, Hughes spends as much time allowing other "authors" of trivia to take pot shots at Schott. "Let's just say there was much about what was in (Schott's Miscellany) that I didn't find interesting, and rather common," said the author of the book Assorted Trifles. (sample "trifles": Shakespeare opening lines, prohibited items on eBay and celebrity epitaphs) Make your own joke here.

If nothing else, the story is a nice Christmas present for all of those bloggers who lament the fact that people just aren't reading serious literature any more. If only the story were available online for linking...