Ha Jin has nabbed the PEN/Faulkner. This is his second win. And this also makes Ha Jin the second author to win the award twice — aside from Philip Roth.

If my own tale wasn’t enough for you, the erstwhile Mr. Esposito and Golden Rule Jones have offered theirs. Hopefully, other folks will chime in with their own accounts, preferably in dialogue form. Clearly, if there is an overarching theme here, it’s used bookstore employees going out of their way to drive away book enthusiasts.

Lenny Kravitz has donated his guitar to help fight hunger in Brazil. We applaud Mr. Kravitz’s generosity. As anybody knows, a guitar can be cut up and thrown into a stew to serve 12.

Emma Garman has plodded through JSF’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love. Krauss is JSF’s wife. The results? Both novels are remarkably similar.

• Maud has a report from a JSF reading. There are lots of mumbles and ashen expressions described.
• Dan Green is refreshingly unapologetic about his long posts, while remaining concerned that his content is being tagged “read later.”
• Ms. Tangerine Muumuu has some alternative titles for reluctant memoirs.
• Steve Almond offers eight reasons why he writes short stories. Apparently, he can’t accept the flawed framework of a novel and doesn’t care much for plot, two sensibilities which might account for why we’ve been unable to muster up more than cursory enthusiasm for his work.
• Robert Birnbaum, a man who has apparently frightened so many authors that not even Zoe Heller can utter his name, talks with Nick Flynn.
• Terry Teachout is a machine, I tell ya!
• Apparently, romance novels are all about the nookie. All this time I thought they functioned as an excuse to get models who resemble Fabio off the dole. Who knew? (via Sarah)