Over the past few weeks, the Ontario-based publisher Biblioasis has been running a contest called Revenge Lit, in which authors were invited to submit 250-word tales about the murder of a literary critic. (The contest was created to promote Terry Griggs’ new mystery novel Thought You Were Dead, which kicks off with a freelance critic meeting an untimely demise.) The winner hasn’t been chosen as of yet, but all of the submissions have been posted online.

Some of the stories are essentially just venting, but others display moments of solid inspiration. Virginia Winters’ untitled piece wins the prize for best opening line: “The [chalk] outline looked like his ego: bloated, empty, one accusing hand outstretched.” We also liked the basic idea behind Charles Schaeffer’s “Leaping to Conclusions,” which posits that John Wilkes Booth wasn’t actually aiming to shoot Lincoln, but a New York Times critic one box over.

Two of the strongest entries, however, belong to RW Morgan and Ken Duffin. From Morgan’s “Little Guys Don’t Count”:

“Why are you so upset with me?”

Was he dense? “You wouldn’t review the book! We can’t get into the stores now. She’s the best author we ever published – we put everything we had into it. I know we’re a small company, but you could have at least looked at it. We’re ruined!”

“It’s not just me. All reviewers do the same thing. A book needs to fit our standards [...] We look at the size of the publisher, the amount of money spent on promotions, the number of booked interviews, the scope of the campaign. We try to weigh the potential impact on the media. It’s a calculated strategy.”

I pulled out my tape measure. I was ready. Woody sounded concerned for the first time. I think he finally got it. “What are you measuring?”

“Your coffin.”

And from Duffin’s “The Tell-Tale Parts”:

“Byron Lunquist,” he called out. “I’m arresting you for the murder of Julius Pinkle.” Lunquist, clad only in pajama bottoms and tanning ointment, asked the sergeant what had given it away.

“Pinkle was sporting radioactive dye in his nether bits. He’d had a scan the day before. Your dog’s wearing the evidence,” he said. “Plus,” he noted, pointing to the nicely decorated spruce, “you’ve used Pinkle’s head as a tree topper.”

It was safe to say that the Sergeant could appreciate symbolism and irony as much as the next guy.

In response to the recent spat between Ukrainians and Russians over the true citizenship of Nikolai Gogol, The Guardian books blogger John Mullan questions the whole notion of countries laying claims of ownership on writers. He also takes the opportunity to poke some fun at Ireland, for what he sees as its penchant for stealing authors away from Britain.

Look at the Irish, who have proved particularly skilful at this. They have effortlessly reclaimed all the great authors who fled the country of their birth – Goldsmith, Joyce, Beckett – even though the latter wrote some of his greatest work in French, the language of his adopted country. They have managed to persuade many that Laurence Sterne (born in Ireland because his father was a British soldier stationed there) and William Congreve (born in Yorkshire, but educated partly in Ireland because his father was another British officer) were really Irish. (The fact that both these writers were witty somehow confirms their essential Irishness.) And, their biggest triumph, they have taken possession of Jonathan Swift, perhaps the greatest of all satirists. In fact Swift called himself “English”, spoke of his residence in Dublin as an “exile” in “a land I hate”, and did not even have an Irish accent. But he has long become a great Irish patriot, adorning banknotes and tourist brochures.

In case anyone was wondering, it looks like the massive staff cuts at The Globe and Mail don’t have any immediate ramifications for the paper’s books coverage. About ninety employees are exiting the paper this week, 60 having accepted a buyout offer and 30 having been laid off. But publisher Phillip Crawley told Q&Q yesterday that key books-related employees – books editor Martin Levin, online editor Peter Scowen, and publishing reporter James Adams – are not among those departing.

Remember Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the U.S. Airways pilot who became a media hero for shepherding all of his passengers to safety after his plane crash-landed in the Hudson River? Well, it looks like he wasn’t able to save everything that needed saving. According to The L.A. Times, he left behind – please contain your outrage – a library book.

Borrowed through a local Danville branch library, the book — reportedly on professional ethics — belonged to CSU Fresno. Realizing that the book was now swimming with the fishes, Sullenberger asked if the fees could be waived.

The library, sensibly, said why yes, they could do that for him.

Which means the next time you have late fees at the library, if you’ve got a good reason — a really, really, good reason, like successfully ditching an engineless plane in a near-freezing river and saving more than 150 lives –  they might be forgiven.

There’s a new Alice Munro short story in the latest New Yorker. The biennial fiction issue also includes work by Roberto Bolaño, Colson Whitehead, and Donald Antrim. The magazine has put several of the fiction pieces, including the Munro story, behind the online paywall, so you’ll have to shell out for the print copy.

In other news, Giller winner and erstwhile Q&Q cover star Joseph Boyden has another cover to his credit – the new issue of the men’s lifestyle magazine Driven, out this week, includes both a Boyden cover profile and a new short story by the author. (Disclosure: Driven editor-in-chief Gary Butler is a Friend of Q&Q and sometime contributor.)

They’ve picked their 100 notables, they’ve picked their kids’ picture books, and now the folks behind The New York Times Book Review have named their choices for the year’s 10 best adult titles. No Canadians on the list, nor any huge surprises. The late Roberto Bolaño has made the top 10 two years in a row (last year’s pick was The Savage Detectives and this year’s is 2666). Oh, and NYT fan Ed Champion notes in his inimitable style that seven of the top 10 titles are Knopf-published, which does seem a bit weird.

Two Canadian titles have made this year’s list of the 10 best illustrated children’s books – and both of them are published by Groundwood. The press got the nod for The Black Book of Colors, written by Menena Cottin and illustrated by Rosana Faría, and Skim, a graphic novel written by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki.

The latter book, incidentally, was also chosen as one of Q&Q’s Books of the Year.

It’s not often you read an Alice Munro slam, so Quillblog took notice of this one in the Calgary Herald. Staffer Naomi Lakritz, who is apparently a political columnist at the paper, attacks Munro’s new Selected Stories:

Alice Munro’s world is unremittingly grey. It may be one of the seven deadly sins of CanLit to utter a critical word about Munro, but the sin of a scanty plot is an even bigger one. This collection can’t rightfully be called stories. They’re unsatisfying sketches of characters who wander through depressive environments, observing the idiosyncrasies of those around them. Yet, those idiosyncrasies are there simply for the sake of being there; they do not lead to climaxes or denouements.

Now, although we’re certainly Munro fans here at Quillblog, we’re also in favour of critical reviewing and disinclined to kneel before sacred cows. So when we say this review’s an embarrassment, we’re not saying, “Lakritz doesn’t like Munro, therefore she de facto doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

However, it does seem painfully apparent that Lakritz simply hasn’t read much literary fiction before. Which is the real issue here: surely some sensitivity and expertise should be a prerequisite for a book reviewer?

Over at Maclean’s, national affairs correspondent Charlie Gillis is performing a public service of sorts by reading Julie Couillard’s tell-all memoir My Story, which hits stores today, and live-blogging his impressions.

The verdict so far (Gillis is about halfway through): It’s a surprisingly entertaining read and even at times “heartfelt.” The juiciest bits are about Couillard’s affair with her biker boyfriend Gilles, though Gillis has little patience for her disingenuousness about his criminal activities.

So imagine poor Julie’s surprise when he lets on that [Gilles] did time for robbery when he was 19. She’s glossing, here, to put it mildly. He never sold drugs, never “had [a] firearm,” but “after a while” she figured out “Gilles was a moneylender.”

A moneylender? Er no. Fannie and Freddie are moneylenders. Gilles was a loanshark.

As this is being posted, Gillis is embarking on day two of his reading. Here at Quillblog, we’re highly anticipating the chapters about Couillard’s ill-fated affair with Maxime Bernier.

After a six-year run, the New York Sun is shutting down. From the New York Times:

The Sun’s president and editor, Seth Lipsky, said a three-week search for new financial backers had failed. Mr. Lipsky announced on Sept. 4, in a front-page “Letter From the Editor,” that the Sun would shut down by the end of the month unless it raised new money.

As he spoke, the stock market was diving toward the largest one-day point loss in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. “Among other problems that we faced,” he said, “was the fact that this month, not to mention this week, has been one of the worst in a century in which to be trying to raise capital, and in the end we were out not only of money but time.”

The Sun will close after publishing today’s issue. Lipsky started publishing the Sun with $15.9-million he raised from several backers, one of whom was Conrad Black - though Black’s company Hollinger International sold their stake in the Sun after Black quit Hollinger in 2003.