“Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.”

- Ernest Hemingway

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USA Today showcases a few novels in their Book Roundup section.

The New England Review’s latest issue is detailed in Middlebury. It’s kinda like a book.

REQUIEM FOR A BEAST wins awards, confronts racism, and drops the F-bomb. Oh and it’s for kids.

And also from Down Under, demographer Bernard Salt tells us how finding love is even harder than we thought - for them, it’s partly due to big island’s MAN DROUGHT.

Louis Bayard’s new novel, THE BLACK TOWER, gets the nod of approval from The Christian Science Monitor.

This two-part video from a 1950s CBC program features Nabokov discussing his seminal work, Lolita:

CNN, in some weird Bizarro-world article, previews upcoming releases in the context of the political season and Michael Moore’s admonition to stop reading. His publisher, of course, balks.

Danish small press Trykkefrihedsselskabets Library (Free Speech Library) is in negotiations to buy Sherry Jones’s The Jewel of Medina.

Pulitzer winner and Fredericksburg poet Claudia Emerson has been named poet laureate of Virginia.

Godawful Poetry Fortnight rolls on and, like Jesus, William Wordsworth gets a bad rap due more to his followers than his own words.

Just in case you thought you’d never see Michael Jackson, David Gest and Robert Burns in the same news story…

“Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.”

- Joseph Conrad

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André Kertétz’s, ON READING, is rereleased in a new edition for comparison to the grim forecast of a print-less world he didn’t know in 1971.

The Dallas Morning News does us a list of business books.

And Publisher’s Weekly write up a slew of kids books.

The International Herald Tribune has five (count ‘em - 5!) pages of books from their weekend reviews section, but it’s the title first up that gave me pause: WHITE HEAT - THE FRIENDSHIP OF EMILY DICKiNSON AND THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

Eric Idle and John Cleese discuss the “almost Proustian display of modern existentialist football”:

Note: Each day that one was written, The Orwell Prize will be posting an entry from Orwell’s Diaries on the 70th anniversary of its composition. You can read the AuthorScoop preview here.

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An excerpt from today’s entry:

August 26, 1938:

Hot. Dense ground-mist early this morning. Many blackberries now ripe, very large & fairly sweet.

Read all entries.

but I don’t know. Sometimes I think it is what it is, and all the nattering about subjectivity is dry ice in a bucket because you haven’t got a proper fog.

I am notoriously cheap, but I just bought a subscription to THE MISSOURI REVIEW. I’m now guaranteed to have a bit of good reading at some point every quarter, and perhaps a new yardstick with which to measure my own hopes and dreams. And my own failings. Yeah, that’s going to sting. But this is seriously good stuff.

The site previews (and post-views) their print mag. The current ‘Poem of the Week‘ is wonderful (and I’ve got a teeny little attention span, so you know it’s something special.) There are archived pieces available for download and all sorts of goodies - podcasts, blogs, essays. Today’s sci-fi offering from the archives is completely oddball and still riveting. That has to be good taste. Or else I just haven’t had enough coffee yet.

Enjoy the Site of the Day.

New book by Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk to be published in more than 30 languages.

Sharon Osbourne (presumably with the help of a ghostwriter) in talks to publish her first novel, emulating other celeb-literary heavyweights like Katie Price, Pam Anderson and Naomi Campbell.

What the Internet hath wrought: longer titles.

What the Internet hath wrought: shorter stories.

R.I.P. Ahmed Faraz

R.I.P. Jeannette Eyerly

There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away
Nor any courses like a page of prancing poetry
This traverse may the poorest take without oppress of toil
How frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul!

- Emily Dickinson

The rise of the bad boy as icon is what it’s all about in John Capouya’s new book, GORGEOUS GEORGE - THE OUTRAGEOUS BAD BOY WRESTLER WHO CREATED AMERICAN POP CULTURE.

The New Yorker gives a quick peek at Rowan Somerville’s, THE END OF SLEEP.

Jewish community and customs in India rivet in THE LAST JEWS OF KERALA: THE 2,000 YEAR HISTORY OF INDIA’s FORGOTTEN JEWISH COMMUNITY.

Tom Piazza’s latest, CITY OF REFUGE, draws from his time in pre and post-Katrina New Orleans and even more from his pre and post-Katrina heart.

Publisher, Richard Nash, guest-blogging on Ecstatic Days, admits that the industry doesn’t hold readers in very high regard. You think?

…there is a real tendency in our business to treat the customer as this perverse, mysterious, gullible, arrogant, narrow-minded, slightly thick, imperceptive lug. We largely talk down to him, dumb down for her, expect the least, fear the worst, and generally leave it up to the retailer to figure out how to reach him or her…

So he asked (on his own blog) the grubby, punk readers for their opinion on the matter of a book cover he was considering. Impressed with the answers he received, Mr. Nash - sort of thinking out loud during his stint as guest blogger - wonders how publishing could be improved by asking those who’d care enough to answer: what do you want to read?

So, you tell me and I’ll pass it on. Or hunt him down yourself. Couldn’t hurt.

I want to express my deep appreciation to Jamie Mason for covering for me last week during a very difficult time.

As an act of professionalism, it was impressive.

As an act of friendship, it was humbling.

Thank you, Jamie.

An interview with Lokata singer/songwriter and author Red Feather Woman, talking about her new book on Native American meditation:

Note: Each day that one was written, The Orwell Prize will be posting an entry from Orwell’s Diaries on the 70th anniversary of its composition. You can read the AuthorScoop preview here.

Additional note: Due to my short haitus, I am updating excerpts today based all of Orwell’s entries from August 17 - August 25, 1938. Day by day excerpts will resume tomorrow.

.August 17, 1938:

The barley from the 22-acre field is not stacked yet, but the wheat is stacked & makes two stacks measuring so far as I can judge it 30’ by 18’ x 24’ (high) & 18’ x 15’ x 20 (high). If these estimates are correct, this works out at 14, 040 cubic feet of stack for about 14 acres of ground. Allowing 1 ton per acre, it seems 1000 cubic feet of stack represent a ton of grain.

August 19, 1938:

Yesterday fine and rather windy. A fair number of ripe blackberries. Elderberries changing colour rapidly. Hazel nuts almost fully formed. Valerian & mulleins over.

August 21, 1938:

Went in afternoon and saw Kit’s Coty, a druidical altar or something of the kind. It consists of four stones arranged more or less thus:

August 22, 1938:

Nights are getting colder & more like autumn. A few oaks beginning to yellow very slightly. After the rain enormous slugs crawling about, one measuring about 3” long.

August 22, 1938 (presumed to be the 23rd):

Cool this morning & raining most of the day. Most of the crops in & stacked. Blackberries in Suffolk much less forward than Kent, otherwise little difference in the vegetation.
When clipping fowls’ wings, clip only one wing, preferably the right (left wing keeps the ovaries warm.)
Cold tea is good fertilizer for geraniums.

August 25, 1938:

Gipsies beginning to arrive for the hop-picking. As soon as they have pitched their caravans the chickens are let loose & apparently can be depended on not to stray. The strips of tin for cloth-pegs are cut of biscuit boxes. Three people were on the job, one shaping the sticks, one cutting out the tin & another nailing it on. I should say one person doing all these jobs (also splitting the pegs after nailing) could make 10-15 pegs an hour.

Read all entries.

Back in the saddle. Giddyup:

Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara offers some literary brain-teasers. The Seattle Times serves up a handful to whet your appetite.

A new book claims that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was brought to life with significant help from her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Jason Steger, writing for The Age, examines the writer’s quest ‘for a kind of truth’.

The AP takes a look at life inside the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference

Whatever happened to all the drunk writers?

“Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man’s life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.”

- Leo Tolstoy

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A READER’S HISTORY: FROM AESOP TO HARRY POTTER diagrams the evolution of children’s literature.

James Woods’, HOW FICTION WORKS, is praised in Calgary in a review that shows how book reviews work as well.

Brunonia Barry makes good with her debut novel, LACE, or so they say in San Jose.

The New York Times’ quick-list of current bestsellers, by way of The Calgary Herald.

Gonzo scholar, Mary Beard, takes on the day before the disaster in POMPEII: THE LIFE OF A ROMAN TOWN, and the Guardian takes on the author’s status as a curiosity in the modern British literary scene.

Barbara Kingsolver reads the first chapter of her latest - ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE: A YEAR OF FOOD LIFE