To be frank, recently I have felt so stupid, so dazed, so empty-headed that I have truly doubted whether I am able to write anything new at all anymore. All the tangled chaos that the musical periodicals vomit thick and fast about the music of today has come to weigh heavily on me. . . .

– Béla Bartók, 1926

N.B. In the same year, W.B. Yeats wrote “Sailing to Byzantium”.  Its opening line - That is no country for old men - seems to reflect commiseration.

Illinois’ mouthful online news - The Journal Gazette - Times Courier - recommends Susan Arnout Smith’s mystery, OUT AT NIGHT.

Publishers Weekly gives us a new crop of kids’ books.

It seems ages since I’ve seen Peter Straub’s name, but he’s back and in Straub-y form by all accounts, with A DARK MATTER.

Marisa Matarazzo convinces a skeptical LAist that her collection of romantic shorts, DRENCHED: STORIES OF LOVE AND OTHER DELIRIUMS, isn’t just a Valentine’s gimmick.

Friend of AuthorScoop and memoirist-poet-writer-blogger, Kim Michele Richardson, asked us back for her annual invitational Valentine-athon.

Editor-in-Chief, William Haskins, breaks ground on this year’s festivities with a great piece on why you shouldn’t punt on the one day we set aside to make our feelings known.

Jamie Mason will be along later in the week with some commentary on the hues of St. Valentine’s Day.

Don’t miss it!

Author magazine interviews English author Jasper Fforde:

Elissa Bassist chats it up with comedienne and author Julie Klausner. (The Rumpus)

With Salinger safely delivered to history, the battle over his characters heats back up. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Robert McCrum examines the British appetite for World War 2 stories. (The Guardian)

Jason Boog chronicles the end Amazon / Macmillan standoff. (GalleyCat)

Katherine Schulten rounds up some of the favorite reads of both teachers and students. (NYTimes)

Geek Girl head Stephanie Vaughn Hapke weighs in on the future of eReaders. (Huffington Post)

Peter Stothard comments on some of the best of Brit Lit. (The Daily Beast)

Congratulations to the Literary Saloon on passing the 2,400 reviews mark. (Literary Saloon)

Carol Rumens returns with a new poem of the week: John Dofflemyer’s “Twenty-Sixth Winter.” (Guardian Books Blog)

R.I.P. Equator Books in Venice, California. (LATimes)

On this day in 1577, Robert Burton was born. (Today in Literature)

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.”

-H.L. Menken

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The Dallas Morning News doesn’t know quite what to make of Don Delillo’s highly experimental style and template in POINT OMEGA.

A look inside KING OF THE LOBBY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAM WARD, MAN-ABOUT-WASHINGTON IN THE GILDED AGE, by Kathryn Allamong Jacob, could be depressing or enlightening - or both if you’re in a mood.

THE WIFE’S TALE by Lori Lansens packs an emotional punch according to Monsters & Critics.

Kirkus is still rolling them out and flying in the face of their cantankerous reputation with a pleasant review of Paul Collier’s THE PLUNDERED PLANET: WHY WE MUST — AND HOW WE CAN — MANAGE NATURE FOR GLOBAL PROSPERITY.

My Valentine’s Day guest-blogging column is now online over at Writer in Waiting. A taste:

Since the mid-1800s, Valentine’s cards have been big business in both England and America, and this commercialization of people’s most intimate feelings has spread to just about every other holiday, homogenizing most of our celebrations, both sacred and secular, to the point of cliché.

Read the whole piece here.

From the YouTube description:

Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America’s best-selling poets, reads his poem “The Best Cigarette” with animation by David Vaio of FAD:

Katy Guest presents a sharp profile of Dan Rhodes. (The Independent)

The British Library to offer more than 65,000 rare first editions of 19th Century fiction for free download this spring. (Telegraph)

Stanley Crouch on Ralph Ellison: “(His) basic idea was that human frailty determined what happened far more often than human idealism, but that idealism continued to live because—whenever it actually came through!—the results were so monumental that a naive optimism grew.” (The Daily Beast)

Mark Lawson sees in the death of Salinger the end of a “remarkable era in US literature.” (The Guardian)

Claire Messud muses on why there are so few female writers. (Guernica)

Bruce Fessier catches up with a very different Anne Rice. (The Desert Sun)

William Skidelsky tries to solve the baffling riddle of why Martin Amis always seem to be in the line of fire. (The Observer)

Mark Sanderson rounds up some interesting literary tidbits. (Telegraph)

“On this day in 1601, Shakespeare’s Richard II was presented at the Globe playhouse, a performance especially arranged by those hoping to overthrow Queen Elizabeth the following day.” (Today in Literature)

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”

-Alfred Hitchcock

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Stuff your face with first-meal delights and lose the pounds.  Seriously.  Dr. Daniela Jakubowicz shows us how in THE BIG BREAKFAST DIET: EAT BIG BEFORE 9 A.M. AND LOSE BIG FOR LIFE.

John Steinbeck’s TORTILLA FLATS gets a new review - mostly good.

THE POSTMISTRESS, by Sarah Blake, is made out to be a cure for snowed-in torpor: read it and come back to reality when the weather’s a little better, or at least until someone else has shoveled the drive.

The Irish Times doesn’t love Martin Amis’ THE PREGNANT WIDOW.

From the PBS description:

Michele Voltaire Marcelin, an artist, poet, spoken word performer and teacher, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Since the earthquake struck that country last month, she has been struggling to make sense of the destruction.

Tom Leonard talks to Peter Carey about his newest novel, Parrot and Olivier in America. (Telegraph)

For $89, you can sort of make your eReader look like book. Something else that looks like a book? A book. (GalleyCat)

Michael Crichton’s considerable art collection heading to auction. (The Guardian)

Steve Almond interviews his former student, and now published novelist, Jason Mulgrew. (The Rumpus)

Macmillan and Amazon decide to play nice. (Publishers Weekly)

A handy recap of what the hell the Google Books Settlement is all about. (Telegraph)

Simon Crump draws the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing. (Guardian Books Blog)

R.I.P. Tomás Eloy Martínez, author. (NYTimes)

On this day in 1939, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep was published. (Today in Literature)

“Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.”

-Irvin S. Cobb

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Jenny Sanford, wife of disgraced South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, tells it straight as she’s able in STAYING TRUE.

It’s not new, but when a poker legend and commentator turns his expertise into PHIL GORDON’S LITTLE GREEN BOOK: LESSONS AND TEACHINGS IN NO LIMIT TEXAS HOLD ‘EM, it’ll come up for review even years later.

USA Today features a page of books for African-American history month.

Here’s a page of recent books reviewed by The Atlantic.

A 2007 reading by Brooklyn’s new poet laureate (among others):

Howard Zinn lives on through the controversy generated by his books. (The Boston Globe)

Take a hazy journey through of a rogues’ gallery of literary drunks and addicts. (LIFE)

Australia’s richest literary prize is no more. (ABC News)

Toby Lichtig explores the morality of defacing books. (Guardian Books Blog)

Barnes & Noble announces its plans for Tikatok, five months after acquiring the award winning children’s book publishing website. (MarketWatch)

Doubleplusgood: Study by marketing group discovers 93% of eReader users are happy with the technology. (Electronista)

Justice Department still not happy with revised Google Settlement. (Publishers Weekly)

R.I.P. Hans L. Trefousse, historian and author. (NYTimes)

R.I.P. Susan Morgan, aka Zoe Barnes, aka Sue Dyson, author. (Daily News)

On this day in 1959, Carson McCullers hosted a small luncheon party in order that seventy-four-year-old Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke (Isak Dinesen) could be introduced to Marilyn Monroe. (Today in Literature)

“Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

-  W. Somerset Maugham

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The Guardian endorses Natasha Walter’s LIVING DOLLS: THE RETURN OF SEXISM as pretty difficult to disagree with.

Canadian author Lawrence Hill has been awfully busy - his two new releases, THE BOOK OF NEGROES and THE DESERTER’S TALE, are on the ‘New Releases’ table simultaneously.

Re-released after more than fifty years, MISS HARGREAVES by Frank Baker still earns an ‘hilarious’ and ‘utterly enjoyable’.

Science and intrigue pull this biography right along - Michael Hunter gives us BOYLE: BETWEEN GOD AND SCIENCE.