Canadian Press: “A woman who used fondue fuel to set her boyfriend’s penis on fire will spend the holidays in jail.”

Renee has put up her first Booktalk podcast, which apparently replaces cars with books and involves Renee and some guy named Eli responding to various voicemails that people leave about books. In any event, do give them a call at 415-992-8622, tell them about “winter books,” and bemuse them with ten-cent words.

Bookfox reports on a reading with Glen David Gold which answers a most important question: will Glen David Gold write a followup novel to Carter Beats the Devil? The answer is contained within the Fox’s sly report:

The highlight of the Evening was Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil, who read from his new, as-yet-unnamed novel. He said it had been “kicking his ass for the last six years”, and read us the first chapter, which included a lighthouse-manning mother who wished for a disaster to relieve the monotony, her son as a rebellious idealist, and the sighting of a man in a sinking craft at sea who appears to resemble Charlie Chaplin. Afterwards, Gold said that because of the editing process and the period before printing, the novel won’t be out for another two years, give or take six months, which is too bad because we all can’t wait.

Friend: The Vogons were misunderstood.
Me: Are you kidding me?
Friend: They wrote poetry.
Me: The Vogons destroyed the planet Earth to make way for an intergalactic bypass. Even accounting for the questionable value of Vogon poetry, how, by any stretch of the imagination, can this action be redeemed? That’s genocide! That’s like Saddam gassing the Kurds!

Remarkable. (via MeFi)