The United States isn’t the only nation facing school library budget shortfalls. Our friends to the north seem to be having severe problems too. Aside from contending with obsolete books, despite the rise in books checked out by students, there aren’t enough librarians to go around.

George Lucas has announced that the new Star Wars movie is not for kids. Of course not. The new movie is for fortysomething fanboys who still live with their parents.

The Scottish, still reeling from the failed “Edinburgh is the Center of the Literary Universe” campaign, are now planning a Scottish dictionary. Since no one here seems to have the vision of James A.H. Murray and there’s no VC to speak of, “secret scribblings” are being auctioned off instead: a poem by JK Rowling and a draft version of what may or may not be the last Rebus novel. Chris Robinson, the leader of this project, claims that she used “sheer brass neck” to get these drafts. And this might be the problem. Anyone even remotely familiar with the Sunday morning hangover knows about sheer brass necks and how this physical condition often leaves one clamoring out of the bed around noon. Brass balls, on the other hand, go well beyond Alec Baldwin and are generally good when paired up with ambition and a focused plan. Had Robinson offered say a date with Irvine Welsh rather than turgid tetrameter quatrains from Ms. Rowling, we’d be more in her corner.

Alice Thomas Ellis has passed on. Any novelist who dresses exclusively in black is, as far as we’re concerned, worth lowering your hat over.

The Hollywood Reporter needs to understand that “Disney” and “rebels” do not belong in the same headline, unless Roy Disney leads a beer hall putsch. In which case, we should be very concerned with this sort of thing.