• Historian Frederic Wakeman has passed away.
• Prognostication has begun for the next round of Nobels.
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Karen R. Long talks with Alison Bechdel.
• Maud Newton reviews Aminatta Forna’s Ancestor Stones.
• Scott wonders if giving Murakami the Frank O’Connor Prize was a way to build up the award’s reputation.
• David Orr returns to the NYTBR‘s pages and takes on Stephen Fry’s poetry.
• Peter Lurie’s “The Rush to Judgment” (via wood s lot)
• Matt Cheney, Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer seek your recommendations for The Best American Fantasy.
• The Telegraph has printed excerpts from Michael Palin’s 1976 diaries. Lots of inside dirt, including a surprise revelation that Graham Chapman was into ichthyophilia, but no fish slapping dance.
• Roald Dahl’s 5 Books to Take to a New Planet. (via So Many Books)
• Colin Burrow has an interesting article on John Donne and literary biography.
• The difficulties of food critics photographing meals. Given low light conditions and the need for a flash, there is nothing surreptitious in taking out a camera and snapping your red snapper. These critics may as well paint their faces, wear a neon polyster suit, and scream, “I am a food critic and I can write this off!” just after being served the meal.
• Publisher L. Gordon Crovitz on the new WSJ: “The product span of this Journal is not going to be 50 years. It´s not going to be 10 years. It’ll be closer to 5, or maybe closer to 2 or 3.”
• Also from Editor & Publisher: It looks like the Gray Lady underreported the “Gettysburgh” Address. The Times regrets the error.
• Gnarls Barkley, “Gone Daddy Gone.” Crazed animated fleas and more.
• CultureSpace on Olivier Assayas.
• Miss Manners meets casual sex?
• Publishers target bloggers, in part because they publish too many books and can get more of a guarantee from them. Then again, if you’re getting an inarticulate response from a MySpace page, is this really a good way to go about publicizing? (via Bookninja)
• Pictures from The Golden Encyclopedia. (via The Beat)
• Terry Teachout on YouTube.
• An interesting inner-city London reading campaign.

© 2006, Edward Champion. All rights reserved.