• Ron Howard will be destroying directing Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children for the big screen.
• Douglas Coupland’s JPod is being turned into a 13-part television series. (via Bookninja)
• Okay, this is sort of a Harry Potter link, but not really. Frank Wilson’s words about hubristic security measures are well worth reading.
• Maud on out-of-town bookstores.
• Matthew Tiffany has the scoop on Tom McCarthy’s next novel — excerpt here. And then of course there’s this.
• Dan Wickett offers a third panel of literary translators.
• David Ulin outs himself as a Leonard Maltin Movie Guide junkie. I have to confess. I pick one of these puppies up every year too and have spent too many hours, often with beer and friends, pondering its odd subjective slant (four stars for The Cider House Rules?). It’s always good to have a backup for when the IMDB goes down.
• I don’t entirely agree with Charles Taylor’s argument, but he does have many good points about mass readership.
• Someone has purchased Mediabistro: “A woman with a boa and a dream and a bad laugh has emerged from the hubbub of the internet triumphant.”
• William Gibson “briefly noted” in The New Yorker? The times they are a-changing?

• “Your money is now our money and we will spend it on drugs!”
• Simon Owens has written an extensive piece on Harriet Klausner, who is truly a menace to coherent sentences and taking a stand — two things that one would expect from a critic. If Harriet Klausner is a critic, I am a turtle chronically nibbling on Tetra Ropotmin who copulates four times a day with an even-toed ungulate.
• Warren Ellis: “Note: cigarette breaks are built into all signing times.”
• Christ, I can’t take this anymore. Fuck Raincoast. Get your Potter torrents here.* I do not endorse downloading the book, but someone has to offer a contrarian response to the insistent demands, protocols, and other wretched assumptions that the Harry Potter publishers have been dictating to the media, and which the media in turn has been willingly kowtowing too. Christ, folks, you’re literary journalists. Show some spine from time to time. Must you devote every column inch to this “phenomenon?” Any newspaper mention of the Deathly Hallows without the journalist actually reading the book is, as far as I’m concerned, nothing less than an ignoble junket. Nicholas Lezard has more reasons why you must take a stand. Look, if you want a damn good children’s series, seek out Lemony Snicket, which has more brains, imagination, and wit per book than J.K. Rowling has in her whole oeuvre.
• You and me both, Brockman. I underwent a six-hour interview today in an effort to obtain my “cultural credentials.” At the end of the interview, the interlocutor took one of those little hammers out of his suitcase — the kind that doctors have. I thought he had intended to test my reflexes, but he decided to repeatedly hammer upon my molars while two guys in expensive suits were holding me down. This was, they said, “the final stage of the interview.” After half of my teeth were pulled out with a rusty set of pliers and I was left on the floor, paralyzed with pain, my gums bleeding onto the concrete, these three guys laughed and me. “You want your cultural credentials? There’s your cultural credentials!” Then they kicked me in the stomach and the nads, dislocated both of my shoulders, and shaved off my eyebrows. If anybody knows of a better way to earn “cultural credentials” (and, incidentally, if you know of a good dentist who works cheap), please drop me a line.
• It appears that John Steinbeck’s granddaughter is going into the film industry as a scribe. Her first offering, I Travel With Charley in the Biblical Sense, should be uploaded to YouTube next week.
• The independent publisher Night Shade Books is having a sale to clear out their warehouses. 50% off all titles, four book minimum. That means M. John Harrison, Iain Banks, Tricia Sullivan, the remarkably underrated Paolo Bacigalupi, and Joe Haldemann. Do help support Jeremy Lassen, one of the craziest motherfuckers in the science fiction industry.

* — And it appears that the Harry Potter snapper made a serious mistake.

• The Millions offers a highly subjective ranking of the McSweeney’s issues, although I’d argue that Chabon’s editorial work on the second genre volume (Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, never issued a number) far exceeds Issue #10. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to see Garth lay down his subjective tastes like this over a literary journal. Here’s an unexpectedly thorough overview of all the issues — along with pictures. And, incidentally, in light of the AMS fallout, you might want to give the McSweeney’s Store and help them out with a purchase.
• Does David Letterman sell books?
• Andrew Wheeler ahs an advance look at Gene Wolfe’s latest book, Pirate Freedom.
• A review of the two-volume American Speeches offering from Library of America.
• 10 Surprisingly Good Tribute Albums.
• James Marsters on Torchwood? WTF?
• Will Gotham Mart live again? (via Bibliophile Bullpen)
• Can you really trust the Geek Squad?
• If you need a Harry Potter cheat sheet before Saturday, this will serve you well. (via Bill Peschel)
• Apparently, the racism racket has caused Tintin in the Congo‘s sales to leap.
• Footloose is being remade. To paraphrase Sammy Hager, the greed gets around. (via Bookshelves of Doom)
• So here’s some real Harry Potter news. Kassia Krozser exposes the book discount racket.
• There’s an interesting series at Editor & Publisher: 10 Newspapers That Do It Right.
• A blog to investigate: Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age.
• Online literary censorship from the Shanghai Information Bureau.
• There’s a legal battle over a Dorothy Parker compilation.
• Dan Green on Tom Perotta: “I understand that practically everyone in the world has a “screenplay” in the works, and that few of them will ever be produced, but if you’re going to write a novel that exists only as a proto-movie, why not just write it up as a script to begin with?”
• Believe it or not, Billy Wilder’s lost classic Ace in the Hole is now available on DVD.
• Apparently, Women’s Wear Daily refuses to electronically disseminate a critical profile of Nikki Finke. Do they fear retaliation from Finke? Before we have clear answers to these questions, in the meantime, David Poland reproduces the profile in question.
• Why is Blade Runner being reshot? More mysterious details from Film Ick.
• Dirk Gently is coming to radio. (via Savage Popcorn)
• DFW in Italy (YouTube)
• YouTube’s 5 Sorriest Questions for the 2008 Presidential Candidates.
• The return of Ayn Rand.
• Apparently, Farscape will be revived in a series of webisodes.
• Reuters: “A German bus driver threatened to throw a 20-year-old sales clerk off his bus in the southern town of Lindau because he said she was too sexy, a newspaper reported Monday.” Beyond the troubling discrimination, who knew that Right Said Fred were seers?

• Schedules being strange and wills being obdurate, the roundup comes the night before. In this week’s Los Angeles Times, the lead review is William T. Vollmann on Oliver August’s Inside the Red Mansion, a biography of Lai Chang-Xing, who Vollmann succinctly describes: “Here is someone who worked hard, took risks and knew whom to bribe.” There’s also a review of Tito Perdue’s new novel by Antoine Wilson. And Ed “I’ll Have a Better View of the Chrysler Building Collapsing Than the Other Ed If Matthew Sharpe’s Dire Predictions Come True” Park has a new column.
• And what do we have on the other coast? Roy Blount, Jr. and Kathryn Harrison. But, alas, it’s all severely undercut by the obnoxious Joe Queenan, a lout who wouldn’t know euphoria even if he were surrounded by a million smart and shapely women.
• And speaking of journalistic institutions, Scrivener’s Error, his views perhaps colored by an inveterate text message junkie, opines that Roger Ebert has lost it.
• Never let it be said that Borders didn’t kowtow to the politically correct. The bookstore chain has moved the Tintin books from the children’s section to the adult graphic novels section, because the Tintin books feature racist stereotypes, but they also feature introductions alerting the reader to these stereotypes. But thankfully Borders has assumed that parents are incapable of making their own decisions, ensuring that their consumer base will remain a thoughtless herd and children will remain attracted to books that offend nobody. No word yet on whether Clement Hurd’s books will be placed behind the Borders counter, with a large sticker reading “SALE OF BOOKS CONTAINING AUTHOR PHOTOS WITH CIGARETTES TO PERSONS UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE IS PROHIBITED BY LAW.” (via Quill & Quire)
• Robert Birnbaum talks with Thomas Mallon.
• Needless hysteria doesn’t get any sillier than this. The Gowanus Lounge reports that some parents are declaring Carroll Park “unsafe for families” with “an increasingly unruly element” of kids. The police won’t do anything about the problem. What are these kids’ crimes? Three teenage boys were slapping each other around with some wet T-shirts and were getting a little too close to the mothers. The boys “pursued us and started snapping their wet shirts over the fence, spraying our children with the water and threatening me.” You know, this is the kind of stuff I usually experienced growing up. If this is the kind of over-the-top hysteria to be found within the five boroughs, I think I’m going to have to do a little bit of investigation here.
• Is current wi-fi a problem?
• Harry Potter hubris? “In the past few weeks, Warner’s London legal office has sent e-mails to booksellers and party organizers around the country, warning them against unauthorized celebrating, under the threat of legal action. ‘[Your event] appears to fall outside our guidelines,’ said one e-mail. ‘Therefore, HARRY POTTER cannot be used as a theme for your event.’ It should also be noted that some of these events actually benefit charities. (via Bibliophile Bullpen)
• Well, if the folks at Warner Brothers are going to be such assholes about this, I call upon Return of the Reluctant readers for a plan! Why don’t we all set up Harry Potter-themed events around the country for next Saturday and see if Warner sends out emails to us? The Harry Potter-themed events must involve drinks, debauchery, BDSM sex parties (with everybody dressed up in leather or Hogwarts costumes), passing around a bong — pretty much anything guaranteed to be adult and well “outside guidelines.” It doesn’t have to be about Harry Potter, of course. Hell, you can all just get together in some bar and call it a “Harry Potter-themed night” for all I care. But if anyone wants to throw a “Harry Potter-themed” drinking session next week, feel free to email me or leave a comment and I will collect all the “Harry Potter-themed” drinking binges and keg-chugging contests in a future post!

• Jessica begins the first in a promised series on the ideal Brooklyn bookstore.
• Heidi Benson investigates Gerald Nicosia vs. Kerouac Estate battles. (via Jeff)
• Are the corporate video game publishers shaking things up with their new titles? Until we see them get serious about adult concepts and treat sex with the same fervor with which they treat violence (how about a first-person shooter in a different sense of the term?), I harbor considerable doubts.
• Niall Harrison on the Readercon “Reviewing in the Blogosphere” panel. Again, we get more of the same “Internet is bad/print is good” nonsense without specific examples. I wish they would simply title these panels “Four Grumps Who Really Think the Internet Sucks,” which would get closer to the truth of what some of these ill-informed print mavens end up talking about.
• Will the Times regret the error?
• Over at The Millions, Garth offers praise to Wyatt Mason, who I would likewise declare one of the more underrated critics who actually gives a damn about literature that innovates.
• Determining personality from personal font choice seems akin to relying upon tarot and the horoscope to figure out how to live your life. What this purported exegesis doesn’t tell us is what kind of personality a person who is too lazy to change the default font in his email client — as I am. Shall we report these hideous individuals to the Department of Bad Slacker Citizens? (via Maud)
• Orthofer tracks down a book I didn’t know about: Gail Pool’s Faint Praise, an examination of American book reviewing that he’s also reviewed.
• The Sydney Morning Herald delivers a lengthy profile of Matt Rubinstein. (Oddly enough, the byline is attributed to Matt Rubinstein. Did Rubinstein profile himself?)
• Forged Oscar Wilde manuscripts. (via Bill Peschel)
• Okay, folks, I’m off to something called Thrillerfest, which I understand is not a convention for Michael Jackson acolytes, but is a place where people do drinking and thus suits me fine. Have yourselves a fine weekend.