Last week, we gave Intern Alexis a week's vacation from the Times Book Review; she spent last Sunday and Monday as a civilian, enjoying her days simply as Alexis and nothing more. Always a glutton for punishment, however, Alexis returned to us "ready to work." But, finding it far more difficult to get back into the swing of things than she had anticipated, our little Lexi could only write with the stream of her consciousness. We dare you to follow. After the jump, we insert the paragraph breaks while Intern Alexis does her best James Joyce.

In his review of Laurel Leff s NYT-chastising book on their weak Holocaust coverage, Robert Leiter comes out and sorta/kinda defends the Times. He writes that while the Times was certainly negligent during this period, it is naive to imagine that more stories on the front page would have changed the course of events. He goes on to argue that her title, actually, has particular but unintended resonance: the Holocaust was an issue buried by the times in which the participants actually lived and not solely by The New York Times. Speaking of unintended resonance and things being buried in the times/Times, this pro-Times review is conveniently buried in this week s Times Book Review, at the bottom of a page right before the Children's Books section. La la la, just sayin.

While we're on the subject, the two most inconspicuous reviews in the Children's Books section, (the only two half-page reviews without illustrations or graphics) are reviews of books written by New York Times reporters - Michael Winerip, an education columnist and Nina Bernstein, a reporter. If you thought you could slip these favors in without anybody noticing, and thought you could hide this from us, oh how mistaken you were! We're assholes! And that's the kind of stuff we seek out! Yes, we think it's precious that Times staffers use their free time to dabble in children's literature, but it's not so precious that both authors clearly get preferential treatment and now have lovely little New York Times blurbs for their book jackets.

We're betting on:

Ilene Cooper of the New York Times Book Reviews calls it a smart novel.

A pleasure to get lost in Maude Lavin, New York Times Book Review.

" assholes!" Gawker.com

While we re taking that stream of consciousness ball and running with it: blurbs. We thought it was amusing that reviewer Steve Erickson, in his review of Hector Tobar's new book, writes: Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States crosswires de Tocqeville s Democracy in America with Che Guevara s Motorcycle Diaries " To the immediate left of this review is an advertisement for a book called Misfortune by Wesley Stace. Says Rodney Welch of the Washington Post Book World, It reads like some inspired collaboration between Charles Dickens and Pedro Almodovar. We think we ve uncovered the secret to writing blurb-worth drivel: Say the book reminds you of something written by a fancy European white guy and a token Spanish-speaking rebel and, poof, you re on the book-jacket. Book reviewing is fun AND easy!

New topic! We thought that it-novelist-du-jour Meg Wolitzer s review of Egypt-related children s literature was rather weak. Our reasoning - two-fold. First off, as big fans of dinosaurs, we did not appreciate all of Wolitzer s dinosaur bashing. For seemingly no reason at all, Wolitzer hates on dinosaurs in the opening and closing of her review and that is not okay with us. Dinosaurs are awesome; Wolitzer, you are not.

Then, there's this: In the first line of the review she writes, In the fierce competition between those perennial juvenile topics, ancient Egypt and dinosaurs, ancient Egypt wins. Sure dinosaurs have those boxy heads and giant teeth and terrifying appetites, but ancient Egypt has mummies, slaves, pyramids, curses and, to top it all off, the Shpinx. I rest my case. Hold up there, tiger, before you rest your case, we have a question: slaves?!?! Dinosaurs have boxy heads, Egypt has slaves, and therefore, Egypt wins? Last time we checked, slaves do not a winner make. I'll take boxy heads over slaves any day.