The New York Times Book Review

"The e-book list has migrated online, the digital world being its natural habitat," the Times announced. "Given the fluid variety of pricing in today’s marketplace, we have also stopped including cover prices on the lists. The third change is the one you’re reading right now."

The third change is a more bloggy look. There will be a new column, called "Open Book," devoted to readings and panels (there are, after all, many a literary event on any given night), as well as an outlet for archival looks back in time. In the debut column, for example, there is a blurb with choice quotes from a 1925 review of The Great Gatsby (amazingly, people were writing about it even before Baz Luhrmann). "Open Book" will replace "Up Front," the front of book (front of review?) page.

Although nobody, least of all Times Book Review readers, likes change, this one seems relatively benign.

With weeks of media hype and White House blowback muddying the water surrounding The Obamas, one can imagine how the freelancer assigned to review it might not be able to pass up the opportunity to flay a Times reporter in her own backyard. (See Michael Kinsley's review of Times documentary Page One.) But Mr. Brinkley's review wasn't negative, it was just dismissive.

"Call it chick nonfiction, if you will," he wrote. (We probably won't, thanks.) "This book is not about politics, it’s about marriage, or at least one marriage, and a notably successful one at that."

Ah, books about politics are regular nonfiction and books about marriage are chick nonfiction. Got it. But what, according to Professor Brinkley, are the conventions of this newfound genre?

If The Obamas is an exemplar, chick nonfiction is a home for "dimly controversial palace intrigue" that "reconstructs a half-dozen or so strange, gossipy moments that hardly hold up as serious journalism, but provide insight nonetheless."

In other words, finding unreported, if minor, controversies and reconstructing them through conversations constitutes "insightful" chick nonfiction, which is not the same thing as "serious journalism." (We wonder if Ryan Lizza has been informed.)

We suppose Ms. Kantor (a reportorial Wunderkind, Mr. Brinkley says) was overjoyed to hear she has "gumption," at least. We're pretty sure that's, like, the chick nonfiction equivalent of talent.