• So the question on everybody’s minds is whether the newly appointed George Jones will be good for Borders. There is no need to worry. I have every faith that the man brought back Scooby Doo for two abysmal movies will almost certainly continue to push Borders into the soulless box-store abyss.
• It looks like the residents of Brick Lane are upset. They claim that Monica Ali’s novel is “racist and insulting” and have threatened to disrupt filming of the movie adaptation. They have, as is the wont of flailing lunatics, called the book “a violation of the human rights of the community.” I had no idea that a book was capable of torturing or abusing people, but an inside source informs me that there are as yet undistributed photos of Abu Ghraib in which Lynndie England offers a thumbs up sign to a human-sized edition of Brick Lane. The book reportedly committed further atrocities, which I cannot name here. Let this be a warning to all of you book lovers: Within every book is a potential Severian and O’Brien. Watch yourself when you visit a library. (via Booksquare)
• Laila Lalami keeps track of the casualties in the Middle East.
• What Meggan said. David Bowie, mofos!
• Geeks may be descending on Comic-Con. But here’s a dirty little secret: Did you know that none of the guests get paid to appear? Warren Ellis, for one, wants people to stop asking him why he’s not going.
• Tao Lin lost a book deal with Future Tense Books and explains why in an 11,000 word post. Many have responded in the comments. Train wreck ensues. (via The Publishing Spot, a quirky blog that you should be reading too)
• Lorrie Moore at Tin House.
• Tomorrow is World Jump Day. Play the Kriss Kross song for inspiration.
• A collection of fictional road maps. (via Vidiot)
• The things they discover in libraries these days.
• Studs Turkel has been awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
• William Trevor’s “Folie À Deux.”
• David Gerrold predicts the future. (via Locus)
• “In Defense of Flash Fiction”

• Largehearted Boy chit-chats with Alex Robinson, one of the nicest guys in the comic book industry, for his Book Notes series.
• Sarah offers a remembrance to Dorothy Uhnak.
• When it comes to book readings, Leigh Redhead is a genius!
• Pakistan literary giant Ahamad Nadeem Quasimi has passed away at 89.
• Reminder to litbloggers and media: Folks, can we stop talking about that skinny blonde neocon? If a shameless exhibitionist like me can, so can you! You know that old Twilight Zone where a millionaire beats a chatterbox that the chatterbox can’t talk for a year? Why can’t George Soros make a similar offer to the blogosphere?
• Happy 100, acquittal of Alfred Dreyfus!
• Mr. Orthofer bemoans the lack of Raja Rao obits.
• Sammy T’s current preoccupation? Lesbians.
• Are students writing worse than ever? More importantly, at what point do we measure the decline? Last month? Last year? Ten years ago? And can a lazy empirical approach to this hypothesis speak for students as a whole? Or is Laurence Musgrove full of fecal matter? And can I conclude this bullet item without ending a sentence in a question mark? Rhetoric rhetoric rhetroic. Goes good with a muddy cup of Joe.
• Another year, another Bulwer-Lytton winner.
• Whatever happened to Ladybird?
• Mmmmm….bacon. (via Bookninja)
• I advocate any grassroots effort to confine Joan Rivers to a three-digit figure.
• Lauren Cerand involutes the Zidane scandal, which I think applies to nearly all sports figures (and particularly players-turned-commentators, who, on the whole, show about as much sartorial sense as a seven year old let loose in Hugo Boss with an arsenal of Ben Franklins).
• Last week was apparently the least watched week of television in recorded history. Common sense or another example for Chris Anderson to latch onto?
• Why are so many books written about Tintin?
• Leon Wieseltier: “I think that if a critic discovers a book or a show that he finds pernicious, it is his solemn responsibility to try to do as much damage to the fortunes of that as he possibly can.” Can you imagine sharing a hotel room with this guy?
• A collection of celebrity wedding cakes. (via Quiddity)

• An open memo to John Freeman: Do you even have a sense of humor? Or did you lose it when you became involved with the NBCC? Or are you hoping that maintaining a sourpuss disposition will get you published in Tanenhaus’s pages? I publicly challenge you to either ping-pong, bowling or mini golf the next time I’m in New York City, where we might settle this silly divide between old media and new media like gentlemen.
• Alisdair Gray posts his one-act play, “Goodbye Jimmy.” He’s granted everyone permission to rewrite the play in a different dialect or language, with any changes or additions they like. I must say, I’m tempted to pen a California surfer version entitled “Goodbye Rufus,” replacing the Iran banter with speculation on Keanu Reeves’ sexual orientation.
• Apparently, I have less than a month to get indicted and convicted for tax income evasion or, alternatively, to go crazy with an axe. One thing about Peschel’s list: all the presidential assassins seem to be young. Leon Czologz isn’t on the list, but at 28, he was an elder statesman compared to Booth and Oswald (and Hinckley, whose failed Reagan assassination came at the age of 26). The moral of the story: if you’re President of the United States, you can trust anyone over 30.
• More on the Savanna Samson scam. The Book Standard talks with Samson, but doesn’t ask her who the real author of the book is or why Thunder’s Mouth is taking this approach. Instead, TBS asks the porn star about book digitization, which is akin to asking a typographical expert about the finer techniques of double penetration. Well, that’s okay. While TBS remains asleep at the wheel (not the first time they’ve been indolent), I don’t mind doing a little reporting. It takes all of two minutes. I’ve left a voicemail with Thunder’s Mouth’s associate publicist and I will let you know if I hear anything back. (And, heya, TBS, I rib you because I care.)
• One thing is certain: hip-hop and New Yorker house style don’t mesh well. “For moral support, Gravy had assembled a sizable entourage.” Indeed.
• Elizabeth Crane celebrates ten years in Chicago and reveals the crazed “must-leave-now” circumstances that caused her to flee New York.
• The Chronicle‘s Simone Sebastian reports on the closing of Cody’s. Dibs, meanwhile, calls bullshit.
• Damn. The Alexander Book Company too? That’s four bookstore closings in the Bay Area (ACWLP, Cody’s, Valencia Street, Alexander) in the past few months. (via Kevin Smokler)

A quick bite before more.

• “On Being the Asshole” by Reb Livingston.
• Jonathan Franzen at the Progressive Reading Series? While I thought J-Franz was suitably self-effacing when I saw him years ago at the City Arts & Lectures series, I hope Elliott wrests the mike away from him if he starts going on about Peanuts. (via Kim Said)
• Puppets upstage Beck? (via Paperhaus)
• David Milofsky on failed book readings. (via the Rake)
• Dan Green on metablogging.

I came close, but I didn’t quite finish the next Segundo podcast last night. But I hope to unleash it either today or tomorrow for your Fourth of July listening pleasure. I’ll have some things to say about patriotism and how the state of the country fits into my annual rereading of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution very soon, just before you fire up your barbeques. But in the meantime, I direct your attention to the current literary news at large:

• Lee Goldberg is offering sporadic reports of Thrillerfest. Most astonishingly, he stumbled upon this Phoenix bookstore. Who knew that the Phoenix nudists could outshine (or is the word outblind?) San Francisco on the bookstore front?
• The London Times offers one of the first reviews of the new Murakami short story collection. (via Black is the New Blood)
• Leonardo DiCaprio meets Timothy Leary. I never thought I’d pine for the days when Leo was an ABC News Correspondent interviewing Clinton, but that Leo’s a kid of surprises.
• Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump’s new book will be called Why We Want You to Be Rich: Two Men — One Message. Wouldn’t it be more honest for them to call the book Why We Want to Be Rich? Or perhaps the idea here is to disseminate get-rich-quick schemes to desperate rubes naive enough to hand over their $25 to two men who clearly don’t deserve the supplemental income. Interestingly enough, the book will be put out by Rich Press. So at least they’re operating inconspicuously on one front.
• Margo Vargos Llosa: “If I tell you, ‘well, I know a man who became in love with a cow.’ So you smile. That’s a stupid story! But when you read Faulkner, this story becomes something so tragic, so tragic. It’s not the story. It’s the way in which the story’s presented, the way in which he creates a context that can transform this stupid thing into something very tragic in which the human condition is expressed.” (via Out of the Woods Now)
• Ron Silliman on reading poetry.
• Well, damn, if it’s not happening for Kevin, then I’m truly wondering if Superman Returns is the bomb it is. I will offer my two cents sometime this weekend after I’ve had a chance to see the film.
• Google won a suit in Germany to progress their library project.
• Leonard Cohen interviewed at the Online Newshour. (via Bookninja)
• Olentangry Liberty High School, clearly not understanding that teenagers are much smarter than people give them credit for and not realizing that humanity is currently operating in the 21st century, gets its panties in a bunch over The Lovely Bones and The Curious Incident of the Dog at the Night-Time. After one (and only one) complaint from a parent, they’ve pulled the books from the summer reading list. And where is this school located? Ohio, of course. (via Collected Miscellany)
• The New York Press‘s Brian Heater talks Lost Girls with Alan Moore.
• Leo Strauss: father of the neocons or not?
• Happy tenth anniversary, Spike!
• RIP Dale Waters.
• I took Craig Thompson to the excellent Ploy II when he came through San Francisco a few weeks ago, but, due to a freak accident, the data from our conversation got corrupted. So there will be no podcast, I’m afraid.* But thankfully Dave Welch is on the case, matching Thompson up with Alison Bechdel.
• I agree with Dibs that a book review editor who misspells Johnnie Walker is highly suspect. Particularly for those of us out here in literary land fond of liquor.
• A few people have emailed me, wondering about the status of my 75 Books challenge. Well, I hope to get some minireviews up fairly soon. Rest assured, I’m ahead of the game. I stand by my word. 75 Books by the end of the year or I’ll eat my weight in rice pilaf.

* And yes I have used every resource possible. Data recovery programs, incantations, you name it. The data simply refuses to exist!