• Adrienne Martini on Octavia Butler. (via Bookslut)
• Callie Miller offers a poetry appreciation week. I’m hoping to find time to contribute something, but do feel free to participate.
• Dan Green serves up a fiction blog.
• A.I. Bezzerides, who wrote the great overlooked film noir Thieves’ Highway (thankfully now available through Criterion after many years of being unavailable in any video format), has passed away.
• HarperCollins has doled out a shitload of money for Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games. A million dollar advance and a $300,000 marketing budget. Is there any way that this 916-page epic will make its money back?
• Jeffrey Archer has written the Gospel according to Judas. I suspect this book came quite naturally to Archer.
• Goodbye Sobol. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
• Ed Park has photos of Brazilian book racks.
• Need something that will have you clamoring for a cold shower? Screech’s Sex Tape Follies is a good start.
• Tod Goldberg finds out what happens to publicists with cross-pollinating interests.
• Rake on “fatherhood writing”: “Somehow, we’re suffering from a spate of fellows who’ve struggled to the conclusion that parenthood is a mixed blessing, yet are dumb enough to think that this isn’t common knowledge, and, unfortunately, maintain just enough intelligence and dexterity to bang away at a computer keyboard. This is a highly dangerous mixture of persistent and stupid, found generally in drug mules, sportswriters at mid-market newspapers, traders of Dave Matthews Band live boots, and dudes who hang barbells from their junk in-between acts at Ozzfest.”
• Terry Teachout has some helpful hints for publicists on how to get reviewed.
• Now we’ll never know exactly how and where to score Scooby snacks, or precisely what substances these delicacies were laced with. Only Iwao Takamoto knew the answer.
• Drawn & Quarterly will publish Lynda Barry’s first new book since 2002.
• A Swedish librarian fashion show? I…I…mah…my…ergh…uh…is there a librarian foreign exchange in place? (via Bookshelves of Doom)
• Heh. (via Bookninja)
• After 16 years in San Francisco, Keith Knight’s going Hollywood.
• Well, this new blog discovered by Linda gets my vote for coolest new litblog title.
• The first few minutes of Idiocracy. (via The Creekside Review)
• William Boyd’s Restless has won the Whitbread Costa.
• Orhan Pamuk was queen editor for a day for a Turkish newspaper, devoting the coverage to oppressed artists. (via Isak)
• George Saunders solicits your help. (via Maud)
• John Leonard on Tillie Olsen. (via The Mumpsimus)

© 2007, Edward Champion. All rights reserved.