Stephen Howe finds Bill Schwarz’s The White Man’s World an excellent first step in a planned three-volume set of historical studies.  (The Independent)

David Blair finds some hope for the Middle East in a triple-shot review of three books on The Arab Spring. (The Telegraph)

Nicholas Lezard declares The Oxford Book of Parodies an “essential, pretty much unputdownable anthology.” (The Guardian)

Steve Kistulentz heaps the praise on Adam Goldbarth’s new volume of poetry, Everyday People. (The Rumpus)

Will Maurice Sendak save us from children’s books by Stephen Colbert? Tune in to find out. (GalleyCat)

Caldecott and Newbery winners tell us what it’s like to answer the phone and get the big news. (Publishers Weekly)

The state of poetry in China gives rise to a cause to nurture it. (ChinaDaily.com)

Random House UK editor, Rebecca Carter, switches tracks and becomes a literary agent. (Publishing Perspectives)

Publishing Trends recaps this year’s Digital Book World events. (publishingtrends.com)

The London Book Review posts a a poem about Sherlock Holmes. (lrb)

Buy a good review? Say it isn’t so. (The New York Times)

How Chris Evans learned to love books. (The Telegraph)

The Museum of Modern Art in New York hosts a new exhibit devoted to print works. (The Los Angeles Times)

Simon Garfield rates the fonts. (fastcodesign.com)

“On this day in 1722 Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders was published. Defoe’s title page is one of literature’s longest come-hithers, and casts a wide net: ‘The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c who was born at Newgate, and during a Life of continued Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five time a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew rich, liv’d Honest, and died a Penitent.’…” (Today In Literature)

“I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively…For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don’t lie to yourself and use the wrong words. “

-Hunter S. Thompson

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Susan Balée finds Jo Nesbø’s Leopard “a moral slough” due to its depiction of violence against women. (Philly.com)

Bob Minzesheimer says The Fault of Our Stars, by John Green, is not a “cancer book.” (USAToday)

William Landay’s thriller Defending Jacob scores a B+ from Thom Geier. (EW.com)

Tom Rob Smith closes his trilogy with a bang in Agent 6. (LATimes)

Vladimir Putin compiles a 100 book to-be-read stack for Russian students. (The Guardian)

“There were more books published this week than there were in all of 1950.” Wow. (GalleyCat)

You’ll look silly if you confuse Shakespeare with The Telegraph’s chief book reviewer. (The Telegraph)

New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has his reading tastes reviewed. (The New York Times)

A closer look as to why Andrew Miller’s, PURE, was awarded the Costa Prize. (The Telegraph)

If Scotland leaves, it’s taking its literature with it. (The Guardian)

Sesame Street joins forces with Random House to make ebooks for early readers. (DigitalBookWorld.com)

The Indian media weighs in on the Salman Rushdie mess in Jaipur. (The Wall Street Journal)

Mid-grade author, Peter Johnson, chats with Kirkus. (Kirkus Reviews)

Here’s a peek at the mansions of fifteen famous writers. (flavorwire)

A writer’s research leaves him scalded by the state of human trafficking. (The Huffington Post)

Apps and the publishing industry, a love/hate relationship. (The Bookseller)

“On this day in 1788 Captain Arthur Phillip brought the first British convict ships to anchor in Botany Bay, Australia. Over the next eighty years 825 such ships would bring 160,000 men and women to serve their “transportation” sentence — seven years for most, fourteen or life for some, no time at all for the significant number unable to survive the eight-month voyage. Captain Phillip went on to become the first Governor of Australia, and today became Australia Day…” (Today In Literature)

“Call it vanity, call it arrogant presumption, call it what you wish, but I would grope for the nearest open grave if I had no newspaper to work for, no need to search for and sometimes find the winged word that just fits, no keen wonder over what each unfolding day may bring.”

- Bob Considine

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John Banville declares Philip Larkin’s “death certificate and memorial combined,” The Complete Poems, an “exhaustive, awe-inspiring monument” to the poet. (The Guardian)

Adam Gallari finds “a relatively successful effort” at fiction in playwright Alan Bennett’s comedic collection, Smut. (The Rumpus)

Rebecca Armstrong calls Tom Benn’s The Doll Princess a “madly bloody but sometimes brilliant book.” (The Independent)

Art Taylor takes a wild ride through Bret Lott’s Dead Low Tide—”here a murder mystery, there a late-blooming coming-of-age tale, suddenly a political thriller, intermittently a romance.” (The Washington Post)

Andrew Miller takes the Costa Award for his novel, PURE. (The Guardian)

… and it was a wrangle amongst the judges, too. Here are the top five literary prize battles, according to (The Telegraph)

For all it’s worth, Washington, DC is (once again) the most literate city in the US. (USA Today)

… and in the city, a famous bookstore, Politics & Prose, sets up a business model and cultivates a culture that seems to work, even in this economy. (The Atlantic)

Hey! They get their ideas from somewhere, you know. 11 Academy Award nominees are novel adaptations. (The Huffington Post)

Here’s a list of good books to watch for, coming this year from Down Under. (Library journal)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt joins hands with The Devil. Wait. That’s not right. It’s just Amazon. (GalleyCat)

A turkey, not metaphorical, but flapping and gobbling, breaks into a South Dakota library. (The Huffington Post)

Author, Charla Krupp, dies at age 58. RIP. (The New York Daily News)

“On this day in 1759 Robert Burns was born in Alloway, Scotland, and on this night lovers of Burns or Scotland or conviviality will gather around the world to celebrate the fact. Burns was elevated to national hero in his lifetime and cult figure soon afterwards, the first Burns Night celebration occurring almost immediately upon his death. This is due partly to the poetry and partly to the legendary details of the ploughman-poet life — his years as a poor tenant farmer; his enthusiasm for women (fifteen children, six born out of wedlock)…” (Today In Literature)

“Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.”

- William Golding

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Toby Clements offers up a quadruple-shot of historical fiction reviews. (The Telegraph)

In Elliot Perlman’s The Street Sweeper, Malcolm Forbes finds “an epic tale that spans decades and bridges generations while chronicling the predominant chapters of racial persecution perpetrated in the darkest hours of the 20th century.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

Chan Koonchung’s dystopian novel The Fat Years (translated from the Chinese by Michael S. Duke) impresses David L. Ulin. (LATimes)

Dwight Garner uncovers a “dignified by mild book” in The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith by Matthew Bowman. (NYTimes)

There are the words, then there are how the words look. Here’s a peek inside the sketchbooks of typeface designers. (brainpickings.org)

The Chicago Tribune unveils its new Sunday book section, a premium subscription addition planned for test roll out this Sunday. (The Chicago Tribune)

A tightrope walk, a diplomacy gauntlet, a teasing out of tangles - an examination of the subtleties of poetry editing. (The Telegraph)

Recap of the Caldecott and Newbery awards presentations. (The Los Angeles Times)

Oh dear. Rehabilitated? John Hinckley, Jr. hovers at a shelf of books on assassinations at Barnes & Noble. (The Washington Post)

Now Salman Rushdie can’t even phone it in to the Jaipur Literary Festival. Or video-call it, as it were. (The Times of India)

The shortlist is up for The British Science Fiction Awards. (The Guardian)

A love advice Twitter-spree from Lemony Snicket should be good fun. (The Huffington Post)

A list of bestsellers that a lot of readers seem to hate is on tap at (GalleyCat)

The ebook revolution drifts Down Under. (smartoffice.com)

“On this day in 1670 English playwright William Congreve was born. His ‘comedy of manners’ toasted and tilted at the ‘gala day of wit and pleasure’ enjoyed by those who lived in the inner circles of Restoration power, or wished they did. His characters live the court-life fast and loose, and always rise to their names: Fondlewife, Maskwell, Wishfort, Witwoud…” (Today In Literature)

“Let us begin by clearing up the old confusion between the man who loves learning and the man who loves reading, and point out that there is no connection whatever between the two. A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what it suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading. “

- Virginia Woolf

Margot Livesey’s Jane Eyre “homage,” The Flight of Gemma Hardy, “transcends its time,” according to Robin Vidimos. (Denver Post)

Kitty Ferguson’s Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind drifts a little too close to hagiography for Marcia Bartusiak’s taste. (Washington Post)

Joan Silverman fins Ben Marcus’ The Flame Alphabet a “dense and demanding novel.” (The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram)

Richard Marcus takes a fresh look at the 4-book boxed set of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. (seattlepi.com)

Author, Kong Yalei, celebrates the Chinese New Year with a wonderful essay on reading. (Granta)

Big day for children’s literature: Caldecott and Newbery Prizes awarded today! (The New York Times)

The bestseller lists, explained. (The Sacramento Bee)

The New Republic dissects the shade and nuance of journalistic language. (The New Republic)

Those sexy Canadians and their sexy literature. ‘Tis true. Check it out. (January Magazine)

Stephen King uses all his fingers to count up his favorite books. But, with as much as he reads, I’ll bet he wished he had a lot more hands. (The Christian Science Monitor)

The San Fransisco Chronicle lets the first lines of a few novels speak for themselves. (SFGate.com)

Barack Obama’s reading habits are scrutinized across The Pond. (The Telegraph)

If we write it, they will come: American authors and their sports novels. (Slate)

NPR chews on “predatory” Amazon. (NPR)

Simon Doonan is a little bit crazy, but he’s got a funny book and he’ll tell you how to get your picture taken flatteringly. (USA Today)

“On this day in 1930 Derek Walcott was born on St. Lucia. Walcott’s two-dozen collections of poems and plays — one recent work, Tiepolo’s Hound, widens the range by including his paintings — earned the 1992 Nobel…” (Today In Literature)

“The prime function of the children’s book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvellously through the tangles of his later years.”

-Roald Dahl

Helen Dunmore functions nicely outside her normal comfort zone in The Greatcoat, according to Katy Guest, but it might not appeal to fans of her more literary historical novels. (The Independent)

J. Robert Lennon says Ben Marcus’ “first new book in a decade,” The Flame Alphabet, “has the feel of an event.” (NYTimes)

Beth Kephart lays out a road map to approaching Ayad Akhtar’s debut novel, American Dervish. (Chicago Tribune)

Mary Beard finds little new information (and more than a little fawning) in Sarah Bradford’s Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times. (The Guardian)

The National Book Critics Circle posts their list of finalists for its 2011 honors. (bookcritics.org)

The plot thickens: Salman Rushdie accuses the police of inventing the threats against him to keep him from the Jaipur Literary Festival. (The Daily Beast)

A look at the pending Costa Awards and its current shortlist via (The Guardian)

By today’s standard, Robert Burns might have been a terrorist. (The Scotsman)

Somebody’s buying a lot of ebooks, but nearly a quarter of the Christmas Kindle-gifted say they haven’t turned the thing on yet. (pocket-lint.com)

3M holds court at The American Library Association’s Mid-Winter event to showcase its Cloud Library for ebooks. (Yahoo Business)

While the ALA powers schedule a session with half of The Big Six to chew through more tangles in ebook lending policy. (Library Journal)

The Writers Guild is set to honor achievement in video game writing. (GalleyCat)

Richard Ketchum, author and editor, dead at 89. RIP. (The New York Times)

“On this day, fifteen years apart, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953) and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (1938) premiered. Although both were poorly reviewed to start, The Crucible would win a Tony and Our Town a Pulitzer; and both would become not only classics of American theater, but classic, opposite statements on the idea of community living…” (Today In Literature)

Jennifer Egan is the poster child for the upside of failure. (CNN)

January Magazine gets a kick out of the New York Daily News’ headline on BELOVED banning. (January Magazine)

French publisher, Flammarion, may soon be up for sale, as RCS considers heaving ballast. (Bloomberg)

A first edition copy of Audubon’s, BIRDS OF AMERICA, stretches towards $8 million at auction. (nydailynews.com)

The New York Times hosts a book discussion podcast. (The New York Times)

The U.S. Naval Observatory donates a rare volume to Thomas Jefferson’s Library. (loc.gov)

New book explores how our attitudes towards sex and morality aren’t as new as we might think. (The Guardian)

Waterstones picks eleven authors to watch in 2012. (The Telegraph)

“On this day in 1950 George Orwell died, aged forty-six. Whatever Orwell achieved in his last years seems over-balanced by what he suffered. Against the acclaim earned by the two famous novels — Animal Farm in 1945 and 1984 just seven months before Orwell died — stands a withering series of personal challenges…” (Today In Literature)

“I wrote about how my mum put sixpence in the Christmas pudding - which wasn’t true - and he didn’t put it on the wall. I thought he’d rumbled me, but he came up to me later and put his arm round me and said ‘By the way, Simon, that was a really good poem’, and I thought, ‘Well, why didn’t you put it on the fucking wall, then?’ And I’ve wondered since then if I’ve just been pursuing a revenge career. Every time I finish a piece I think, ‘Put that on your wall!’”

- Simon Armitage