Links to think by for a Friday afternoon

A shortlist of some of the articles we’ve noticed in the past week.

The Booker Longlist:  Every shortlist should start with a longlist, don’t you think? Our end-of-summer reading list is now locked up.

Our favorite review of the week:  OK, this actually came out a couple weeks ago, but Jess Walter’s NYT review of “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P” is still too much fun to pass up: “. . . The data are in. All precincts have reported. It’s official: men suck.”

Oh, the granularity:  In a piece on bookstores, Mike Shatzkin lays out what makes the book industry so crazy-making for newcomers (we won’t get into what makes it crazy-making for old-timers):  “The unique characteristic of the book business that frustrates just about everybody coming into it from the outside: its sheer granularity…”

Keep your TV ads alive on the 2nd screen:  Twitter is opening up its ad service Twitter Amplify to any U.S. advertiser that has a nationwide TV campaign, allowing them to create Promoted Tweets featuring extra content, such as behind-the-scenes clips and highlight reels, and sending those to users Twitter says are likely to have watched their ad. The company said tests of viewers watching TV ads and interacting with related Promoted Tweets revealed a 58% higher purchase intent compared with those who just watched the TV ad.

iPad users love ads (the feeling is mutual):  CNET reports that Apple’s iPad commanded 84.3% of all tablet-generated Web traffic in the U.S. and Canada in June.

Goodreads doubles user base:  In one year, Goodreads goes from 10 million users to 20. Those are some very impressive numbers!

The long view:  Publishing consultant Brian O’Leary waxes lyrical about Norm MacDonald, John Updike, Abraham Lincoln, Carolyn Forché & the universe.

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