You thought that after last week's feces-soaked edition of the Times Book Review, things couldn't get any worse. It's hard to imagine the Gray Lady as a sexy scatological freak — but, sadly, it seems that She might be exactly that. After the jump, Intern Alexis goes back to Pooville so you don't have to.

The March
 By E.L. Doctorow
Reviewed by Walter Kirn

The Great Stink
 By Clare Clark
Reviewed by Susann Cokal

After last week's Dirty Sanchez show courtesy of Joe Queenan, we were not amused by this week's equally poop-filled NYTBR. First, we were graced with the longest bowels-as-metaphor by Walter Kirn in his review of E.L. Doctorow's new book, "The March." He writes (and this is the condensed version): "Call it peristaltic storytelling: that process by which a writer captures his audience not by creating loose ends that must be followed, but by swallowing the reader whole and then conveying him - firmly, steadily, irresistibly - toward a fated outcome Most of the action in "The March" takes place in this creature's elongated gut as it traces its infamous historic course from Atlanta to Savannah and beyond, excreting smoke and rubble from its hindparts as well as thousands of indigestible skeletons." We hate when "fated outcomes" won't come out and then we have to consume a lot of bran flakes.

Then, things took a turn for the more literal in Susan Cokal's review of Clare Clark's London sewage-based novel, "The Great Stink." She writes: "The four-letter word for excrement is sprinkled as liberally through the novel's pages as the actual substance is in the sewers. And the descriptions of that substance are painstaking and thorough; you find out almost more than you would ever want to know about what it feels like smeared across your skin or how it smells in a dead man's trousers The book is very dark, with a focus as narrow as its tightest tunnels." What's the big deal, Cokal, it's just human. We wonder if Ms. Cokal is grossed out daily when she sits down on the porcelain bus to vacate her tightest tunnels. No shit, Sherlock, you say? Well to that, we say, keep digging, Watson.


Hot Animal Love: Tales of Modern Romance
 By Scott Bradfield
Reviewed by Henry Alford

We loved Henry Alford's crazy-as-a-daisy review of "Hot Animal Love: Tales of Modern Romance" because we love to love animals! It's a collection of short stories about animals taking on human roles. Alford writes, "That Bradfield can make us consider the emotional lives of dogs enlarges the category of Things We Typically Care About." Uh oh do we smell another excuse to post a picture of this very human-like big cat? We think so .!


Essay: The Corrections

Here's a recap of Nora Krug's essay, "The Corrections": Sometimes there are mistakes in books. And more often than not, there are no corrections. Seth Mnookin, apparently, made some mistakes in his book. Yawn me a river! There seems to be a new trend in NYTBR essays: here is something mildly upsetting about the book world. Here are what some authors have to say about it. And here are some hot-shot publishing executives who have never cared about this topic before and, frankly, don't know what to do about it. (See: email archiving, self-publishing, etc ) Boring and boringest.