Some book-related links:

• Did a Slate critic help save Nabokov’s last novel from the flames? (Slate)
• Ontario senator helps save Joy Kogawa’s childhood home (CBC.ca)
• Duddy Kravitz: The Musical was doomed from the start – shocker! (Toronto Star)
• An interview with Larry McMurtry, indie bookseller (Downtown L.A. Scene)
• Alberto Manguel, the romantic librarian (The Guardian)
• Interview with McSweeney’s publisher (Los Angeles Times)
• Heirs of Superman co-creator get copyright share from DC Comics (Toronto Star - scroll down)
• Bonus tabloid link: Michigan comic book store owner shot during robbery (MLive.com)
• Bonus bonus tabloid link: Ginger Spice visits bookstore! With baby! Buys Roald Dahl book! (Celebrity-babies.com)

Quote of the week: “The problem with large bookstores is that they contain usually a lot of junk. My focus as a bookseller is to keep the junk out. Because good books don’t pull bad books up, bad books pull good books down.” – Larry McMurtry

Some book-related links:

• Mike Huckabee to publish post-election book (Reuters)
• U.S. Congress pushing for greater transparency in textbook pricing (New York Times)
• Vladimir Putin gets a library to preserve his legacy, following in the footsteps of U.S. presidents like Nixon, Reagan, and, most recently, George W. Bush (Reuters)
• Starbucks ditching music label; could books be next? (Los Angeles Times)
• Cambridge University puts Darwin’s notes online (NPR)
• Sci-fi mag reaches out to the galactic demographic (Marketing Week)

Some book-related links:

• Bush Library to be base for literacy and education, says Laura Bush* (The Dallas Morning News)
• A library where you can borrow people instead of books (InfoSpeak.org)
• We’ve picked the right wine for a book, but what about the right beer? (Omnivoracious)
• Are comic books good for you? (Popmatters)
• Bonus Tween Content: Miley Cyrus to write memoir (Stuff)

* she then said: “What? What’s so funny?”

Some book-related links:

• Romance writer Cassie Edwards breaks with publisher over plagiarism allegations (CBC.ca)
• Mark Abley on playoff English (The Gazette)
• U.K. library’s centenary marked with beer (The Citizen)
• At home with poet Raymond Souster (Toronto Star)
• Learning English for the Olympics (The New Yorker)
• Things to look at, see, and read in preparation for Shakespeare’s birthday (Slate)
• Designing Dante (Creative Review)
• Setting the Britannica free (CNET News)

• In the face of all-too-obvious problems, small publishing houses and modern printing facilities are popping up throughout the Arab world (Bookseller.com)
• Dubai adds a literary festival to its cultural boom (Kipp Report)
• Iraq’s National Library soldiers on after being looted by vandals and neglected by the occupying powers (The Nation)
• An interview with Bahaa Taher, winner of this year’s inaugural International Prize for Arabic fiction (The Guardian)
• Two independent U.K. publishers join forces to create a list devoted to translations of new Arabic fiction (Bookseller.com)
• And finally, an overview of the progress made by all this progress (The Independent)
• Bonus gossip! Tabloid star Salman Rushdie has a new girlfriend, got writer’s block after divorcing Padma Lakshmi, is appearing as a gynecologist in a film, and was lying when he said he loved Islam.

Some book-related links:

• Lonely Planet says author stretched the truth when he claimed to have stretched the truth (International Herald Tribune)
• Tom Cruise bio dropped – actor celebrates by continuing to creep us all out (Telegraph)
• Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project signs on to fight J.K. Rowling’s attempt to quash unauthorized Potter lexicon (Stanford press release)
• Just so you don’t think we’re all about Rowling-bashing: Rowling joins children’s authors in call for end to Darfur conflict (CBC.ca)
• UNESCO pays to have books made, then pays to have them pulped (Washington Post)

Quote of the week: “We have explored every possible option, but have concluded that once the potentially defamatory sections are taken out, there is not enough left to make a good read.” – Macmillan exec on the dropping of the Cruise bio.

Some book-related links:

• 79-year-old book collector finally learns to read (Houston Chronicle)
• A bestselling novel by a soap opera character (The New York Times)
• Lily Allen drops out of Orange Prize jury (BBC)
• The (Stephen) King family live onstage (Washington Post)
• Weidenfeld & Nicolson “ditching history for celebrity” (Telegraph)
• 30 years of Virago (The Guardian)
• Bonus tabloid link: Man charged with preying on kids in Toronto bookstores and libraries (Toronto Sun)

A few book bits:

• The little Montreal book fair that could (Westmount Examiner)
• Battlestar Galactica: the critical studies anthology (warning: each essay ends with insane cliffhanger) (PopMatters)
• Rowan Oak of the north: Gabrielle Roy’s home thriving as tourist site (Winnipeg Sun)
• Ibi Kaslik talks about The Angel Riots (Maisonneuve)

Some book-related links:

• Judging a mate by his/her books (The New York Times)
• What wine goes with that book? (Stuff)
• Will Internet book piracy cause authors to stop writing? (Times Online)
• Settlement in sight for Greater Victoria Public Library (Times-Colonist)
• California librarian fired for alerting police to child-porn-watching patron (Los Angeles Times)
• Fiction’s famous fools (Brandenton Herald)

We keep meaning to make these cheerier, but they always come out grim….

Some book-related links:

• J.K. Rowling contemplated suicide after divorce (BBC)
• Minute of silence in Sri Lanka as Arthur C. Clarke laid to rest (The New York Times)
• The nine most annoying people in bookstores (Bookgasm)
• Cops name their favourite reads* (The Seattle Times)
• Publishing wars: Britain vs. Australia edition (The Age)
• Tintin publisher dead at 92 (ComicMix)
• Do business books make us zombies? (Fast Company)

* Must… resist… “arresting prose”… pun….

Some cheerful book-related links:

• Belgian author Hugo Claus, suffering from Alzheimer’s, is remaindered euthanized at age 78 (Associated Press)
• Two UK publishers liquidated over anti-bullying books scam (press release)
• Black-owned Brooklyn bookstore facing financial crisis (New York Daily News)
• Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen leaves India for Europe over death threats (Reuters)

Some book-related links:

• The Hachette Book Group starts using e-books internally (New York)
• Eminem to “write” memoir (USA Today)
• Author admits Holocaust memoir was made up (The Boston Globe)
• Timothy Findley’s Pilgrim as an opera (The Globe and Mail)
• Authors and booze (The Los Angeles Times)
• Brooklyn is not a writer’s paradise, says Colson Whitehead (The New York Times)
• A look at Updike’s first (Guardian Unlimited)

Some book-related links:

• George Steiner says narrative fiction’s days are numbered (The Guardian)
• Parisian booksellers leave city for picturesque town – there’s a charming and quirky romantic comedy just waiting to be written here (Deutsche Welle)
• Work started on Bush Presidential Library, cheap jokes (The New York Times)
• Steve Gerber, creator of Howard the Duck, dies at 60 (Slate)
• Father and son both pen memoirs about son’s meth addiction (Los Angeles Times)
• Is Abebooks a wolf in sheep’s clothing? (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Some book-related links:

• Alain Robbe-Grillet, dead at 85 (Literary Saloon)
• Two views on product placement in kids’ books (The New York Times)
• Authors often get screwed by Hollywood (Los Angeles Times)
• Profile of David Poindexter of MacAdam/Cage (Al.com)
• Mr. T gets his own graphic novel - what’s next, a Knight Rider remake? (Contact Music)
• 553 first-edition Harry Potters up for auction (Scotsman.com)

Some book-related (but not Valentine’s Day-themed, alas) links:

• Victoria library locks out workers, shuts down all branches (Victoria Times Colonist)
• California bookseller gets $500k MacArthur grant (MSNBC)
• The Coen Brothers to filmify Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Variety)
• Toronto, according to Michael Redhill’s Consolation – with spoilers! (Spacing)
• James Wolcott on Donald Barthelme (Bookforum)
• Borders unveils its first shiny new-style store* (Reuters)

* and it has its own Long Pen booth! (MLive.com)

Some book-related links:

• New James Bond novel gets Russian publisher (MI6)
• New Thunderbirds novels after more than forty years (SWFA Pressbook)
• Salman Rushdie vows to stop creating autobiographical characters (The Canadian Press)
• Mold: the enemy of rare books (Chicago Tribune)
• Woman robs dirty bookshop (The San Diego Union-Tribune)
• John Updike on Flann O’Brien (The New Yorker)
• Deciphering authors’ handwriting (Slate)
• Leah McLaren: our own Paris Hilton? (Seven Oaks)

Some book-related links:

• “Free Radicals,” a new short story by Alice Munro (The New Yorker)
• Robert Fisk’s bio of Saddam Hussein is selling well – except he didn’t write it (The Independent)
• Why does it take so long to publish a book? (The New York Times)
• How the online archive of one student’s books became the behemoth that is LibraryThing.com (The Wall Street Journal)
• The trouble with translations (Times Online)
• Alberto Manguel on Dante’s Divine Comedy (The Globe and Mail)
• An interview with critic James Wood (Financial Times)

Some book-related links:

• Books are tops amongst the world’s online shoppers (The Guardian)
• Apparently, reading is good for kids, so they should do it more (Toronto Star)
• The dumbest space gods in science fiction (io9)
• Will Ferrell – yes, that Will Ferrell – wins James Joyce Award (Canadian Press)
• Zagat restaurant guides to be sold? (The Mercury News)
• Welsh writers in digital archive spat with National Library of Wales (BBC News)
• Nine (American) destinations for bookstore connoisseurs (The News & Observer)
• Professional radio vulgarian Don Imus sued by publisher of presidential bio (CNN.com)
• Three Little Pigs update turned down for award for potential offence (Journal Live)

Some book-related links:

• The flaws in Ishmael Beah’s memoir called “poetic licence” (The Australian)
• Is sci-fi out of ideas? (Entertainment Weekly)
• The Bard goes manga (The Star - Malaysia)
• Tales of romance, in Polish (The Observer)
• Oolichan publisher publishes himself (Vancouver Sun)
• You stole my cookbook title! (The New York Times)
• Book scavengers (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
• Area eccentric reads entire book (The Onion)

• Quebec’s hottest storyteller (CBC.ca)
• In defence of Wikipedia (The Times)
• The scratch n’ sniff Bible – note: this one’s a joke (The Spoof)
• Tom Cruise, part 1: The bio’s juicy bits (Slate)
• Tom Cruise, part 2: Why the book isn’t hitting stores in Australia (Sydney Morning Herald)
• Tom Cruise, part 3: The crazy Scientology video, deconstructed (BBC News)

Some book-related links:

• Because it’s been, what, almost four months since her last book, Atwood has a new novel coming (CBC.ca)
• Martin Amis has a new one, too – guess what it’s about…. (The Observer)
• And Rushdie, too! (Sydney Morning Herald)
• Poet Asa Boxer finds a crate full of photos of Canadian poetry’s earlier days in his father’s cabin (The Avi Boxer Archives)
• Can manga make you smarter? (The Kansas City Star)
• What if you’re gay and you hate gay fiction? (Guardian Book Blogs)
• Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards announced (Critical Mass)

• In a slideshow over at Maisonneuve, photographer Amit Dahan recreates scenes from classic short stories by Chekhov, Hemingway, Joyce, and others.
• BPAC has a blog! Hey, we thought “stepping boldly into the late 20th century” was our joke!
• The Stephen Henighan Giller fight continues.

We’re back!

Some book-related links:

• The Baghdad book revival (Associated Press)
• Anne Frank: The (Spanish) Musical (CBC Arts)
• Book clubs as self-help (The Guardian)
• Toronto Star literary critic Philip Marchand says so long and thanks for all the books (Toronto Star)
• People with better Internet access use libraries more (The New York Times)
• A short (though clunkily written) history of non-fiction war comics (Edmonton Journal)

Regular blogging will resume on Monday, but until then, here’s some book-related links to tide you over:

• Benazir Bhutto’s books big in Islamabad; her final book being rushed into print (The Hindu)
• Young adults may be the biggest library users… (Associated Press)
• … but they’re not there for the books (Slashdot)
• Texas library hires a collection agency for overdue fines (Star-Telegram)
• Canadian readers fall behind the U.S., according to poll (Canada.com)
• Iranian youth use literary forum to express political frustration (Los Angeles Times)
• Kahlil Gibran-mania continues (New Yorker)
• U.K. teacher turns crops into books for Ugandan children (icCoventry)
• Action Camus: literary masterpieces as comic books (R. Sikoryak)

Some book-related links:

• The Golden Compass not pulled from library reading contest after complaint (The Sudbury Star)
• Alice Walker’s papers go to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (The Associated Press)
• A lot of nerds – and Quillbloggers (same thing, really) – are happy today: Peter Jackson will produce the Hobbit movies (The Guardian)
• U of W bookstore takes over neighbouring army surplus store (The Winnipeg Sun)
• What to do when a former president visits your bookstore (Los Angeles Times)
• Menus as literature (The New York Times)
• The tall guy from Little Britain to write kids’ books – they’ll probably be very funny but a little repetitive (BBC News)
• Edmund Wilson: king of the lit crits (The Guardian)
• Age guidelines on U.K. books (The Book Standard)

Some book-related links:

• Arthur C. Clarke makes his wish list for his 90th birthday (The Guardian)
• Have you heard about this LongPen thing? Some people haven’t, apparently (The New York Times)
• Derek McCormack’s fashionable Christmas wish list (The National Post)
• The day the plane hit the booktore (WKRC in Cincinnati - so close!)
• Mystery author Maureen Jennings on her brush with death (Toronto Star)
• Christian bookseller in China arrested (USA Today)
• California library accepts food donations in lieu of overdue fines (North County Times)
• China’s oldest library stays open late (China View)
• Write books, lose weight (Everything Alabama)

Some book-related links:

• The art of the bookstore pickup (MSN.com)
• Ex-library director gets 10 days for stealing chairs (Cantonrep.com)
• Tinfoil helmet time: Chretien repeatedly ambushed by 9/11 “truthers” at book events (Canada Wants 9/11 Truth)
• £1.1 million for Harold Pinter archives (BBC.com)
• Lionel Shriver says Oprah should stick to picking books, not presidential candidates (The Guardian)

Some book-related links:

• Paddington the Bear arrested on immigration charges on 50th anniversary (CBC.ca)
• Comic books handed out in Kandahar to teach kids about human rights (The Canadian Press)
• Speaking of human rights, China to hand out bibles – 50,ooo,ooo of them! – in make-nice gesture (Times of India)
• Making new books out of old (The Register-Guard)
• Bookselling and the gender divide (Mister Aeden Goes To Dubai)
• Who really wrote “‘Twas the Night Before Chrismas”? (Associated Press)

A few recent book-related items:

• Lament for the state of book reviewing, part 3,776 (The New Republic)
• Reviewer B.R. Myers goes after Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke (The Atlantic Monthly via Powell’s)
• Speaking of Powell’s, the legendary store is facing some challenges (L.A. Times)
• Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library expands to the U.K. (Business Wire)
• Stanford Law School takes on J.K. Rowling (East Bay Business Times)
• Vincent Lam on songs that go well with Bloodletting (Largehearted Boy)

Some book-related links:

• Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, urges U.S. and allies to stay in Afghanistan (AFP)
• A.L. Kennedy wins Scottish book award, makes plea for school and library funding (The Scotsman)
• Author Taslima Nasreen under fire in India (Toronto Star)
• Mohammed the Mole now named “Morgan” (The Times of India)
• Are textbooks getting dumbed down? (Guardian Unlimited)
• Books have lessons for greedheads (TheStreet.com)
• The New York Public Library displays mug shots of George W. Bush et al. (CBC.ca)
• Bookstore flasher arrested (Dailypress.com)

Some book-related links:

• Russians aren’t reading enough, either (Sunday Herald)
• Gunter Grass sues his publisher (Guardian Unlimited)
• Coming soon: Eunoia II: A New Vowel – movies based on poems (The Boston Globe)
• Nick Hornby wants to be the male Anne Tyler (The Atlantic Monthly)
• The translator: Sheila Fischman profiled (Toronto Star)

Some book-related links:

• Crime and Punishment - the opera (The Moscow Times)
• War and Peace - the mini-series (The Moscow Times)
• A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - the Wii (kidding)
• More War and Peace, this time from critic James Wood (The New Yorker)
• The best (American) book covers of 2007 (The Book Design Review)*
• Read for fun, be smarter (Washington Post)
• Speaking of reading for fun, do pulp novels need hard times? (Bookforum)

* For the best Canadian covers of the year, as picked by some our top book designers, pick up Q&Q’s special “Books of the Year” December issue, coming very soon.

Some book-related links:

• Jeanette Winterson on the cult of personality (Times Online)
• Britain likes to re-read (The Guardian)
• What do bookstores need? Television! (The New York Times)
• Clive Cussler likes to look for shipwrecks (The Christian Science Monitor)
• Jiang Rong wins the first-ever Man Asian Booker Prize (Yahoo! News)

Some book-related links:

• 45 posthumous stories from Donald Barthelme (New York magazine)
• Richard & Judy to call it quits (CBC.ca)
• For nerds who love words: new virtual hangout for Star Wars poets (Paul Vermeersch)
• Settlement reached in James Frey kerfuffle (Yahoo)
• Biographizing living authors can be tricky (The New York Times)

Some book-related links:

• Orhan Pamuk on Paris Review author interviews (The Guardian)
• The utopian dream of total digitization (The New Yorker)
• Finalists for the innaugural Asian Man Booker Prize – finally, a Booker shortist without Ian McEwan! (CBC.ca)
• Jo Walton’s alternate history (The Los Angeles Times)
• Nobel winner Doris Lessing was once barred from entering the U.S. (PEN America)

Some book-related links:

• Tom Stoppard, author of Rock ‘n’ Roll, admits he doesn’t really “get” rock ‘n’ roll (Vanity Fair)
• Stephen Henighan eulogizes poet, editor, and professor Rob Allen somewhat… Henighanistically (Geist)
  
• Dick Pound (hey, he’s an author, too) named the man with the second-most manly name in the world (Cracked)
• Finally: James Wood on Philip Roth’s newest (New Yorker)
• Amis père and fils racist, says literary critic Terry Eagleton (The Independent)

Some book-related links:

• Book reviews are important after all (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
• Author calls reviewer “old,” “bitter,” and “confused” – as if those are bad things (Porochista Khakpour’s blog)
• Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov bestseller in Japan (The Asahi Shimbun)
• John Grisham sued (CBC.ca)
• Stephen King on short stories (The New York Times)
• Speaking of Stephen King, why are most of the films of his books such crap? (Popmatters)
• A new site for Toronto book events (Toronto Literati)

Some book-related links:

• The National Post paid for excerpts from Naomi Klein’s book, then slammed her in its editorial pages – um, isn’t this usually called “editorial independence”? (The New York Times)
• Vincent Lam on bridging the doctor/writer divide and his “crap” first drafts (Entertainment Weekly)
• James Wood’s first New Yorker review – of the new Roth, Russo, Sebold, translation of the Book of Psalms! (New Yorker)
• The most-banned books of the year (Los Angeles Times)
• A guide to Philip Roth (Sunday Times)

Some book-related links:

• Noted memoirist O.J. Simpson arrested again (CBC.ca)
• Prison libraries get purged (The New York Times)
• Booker judge on who’s in, who’s out (Guardian Books)
• Alan Greenspan’s book blitz (Salon)
• Q&Q reviewer Zach Wells reads Betjeman’s “Slough,” with visual accompaniment (Career Limiting Moves)

Some book-related links:

• No such thing as Shakespeare? (