Copyright protection is scrutinized in Lawrence Lessig’s REMIX: MAKING ART AND COMMERCE THRIVE IN THE HYBRID ECONOMY.

THEN ZORN SAID TO LARGENT… THE BEST SEATTLE SEAHAWKS STORIES EVER TOLD is a page-turner for people who own lots of umbrellas (and the rest of us who like that funky green uniform.)

THE PETS, Brago Olafsson’s American debut, sounds hilarious.

Thriller lovers may look to step up their game, if this review of Mo Hayder’s RITUAL is to be believed.

From the YouTube description:

Eudora Welty is interviewed at home about her famous short story (“A Worn Path”).

“A Worn Path” was first published in “The Atlantic Monthly” in February 1940, and then in her first collection of stories, “A Curtain of Green” (1941)

Bookswim rolls out a “Netflix for Books” rental service.

New England College suing the former director of its poetry master’s degree program, charging that she lured faculty and students away from the school in order to re-create the program in New Jersey.

Tom Gatti interviews Pulitzer-winning creator of “Maus”, Art Spiegelman.

The Telegraph profiles the poets in the running for Britain’s next poet laureate…

…and outlines how the public will get their say in the selection.

This daily feature has made me more contemplative of titles, so FAMOUS SUICIDES OF THE JAPANESE EMPIRE was sure to give me pause. The Chicago Tribune gives David Mura’s debut novel a mixed report.

The grey chill pressing up against my office window seems to be cooling all the reviews I’m finding to lukewarm. Here’s Andrew Anthony of The Observer being noncommital on linguistic expert, Daniel Everett’s, account of his time with the Pirahas in the Amazon - DON’T SLEEP, THERE ARE SNAKES.

Daniel R. Levitt’s biography of ED BARROW: THE BULLDOG WHO BUILT THE YANKEES’ FIRST DYNASTY fares okay, I guess.

And guess what? A mixed bag of fiction reviews from USA TODAY. Careful - it’s a jungle out there.

“Unscripted”, presented by… Chili’s…

ahem…

interviews “Twilight” series author Stephenie Meyer and two of the film’s… stars?…

…okay, stars:

Forbes takes a look at literary hoaxes and fictional authors. View the slideshow here.

David Malouf snags Australia’s richest literary prize for his collection The Complete Stories.

Mary Karr goes grumpy with this week’s Poet’s Choice: Polish poet Adam Zagajewski’s “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”.

The New York Times profiles “Walt Whitman II”.

Progress isn’t Harry Pottered into existence and big changes always arrive on waves of great effort, as Leslie T. Chang documents in FACTORY GIRLS: FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN A CHANGING CHINA.

It it good form to dish on Emily Post?

Reverse engineering a book review from watching the film adaptation yields compliments for Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, THE NAMESAKE.

The International Herald Tribune nudges us towards STALIN’S CHILDREN: THREE GENERATIONS OF LOVE, WAR, AND SURVIVAL by Owen Matthews.

From the Fora.tv description:

Book Passage
Corte Madera, CA
Nov 10th, 2008

Roy Blount, Jr. talks about Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips.

After 40 years of making a living using words in every medium, print or electronic, NPR panelist Blount still can’t get over his ABCs. In this work he celebrates the sonic and kinetic energies of letters and their combinations - Book Passage

 

Merry Christmas! Barnes and Noble sees hellish holiday sales.

A brief history of literary pussies.

It’s “bad sex in literature” season again. Prepare to cringe. 

Video of Mark Crick performing “Hanging Wallpaper with Ernest Hemingway” and “Boarding an Attic with Edgar Allen Poe” from his book The Great Writers’ Book of DIY.

R.I.P. Kristin Hunter Lattany

National Book Award winner, FIRE TO FIRE, earns more praise for poet Mark Doty from The Christian Science Monitor.

The Lost Boys live on in Peter Pan’s Neverland in a new series by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson and Monsters and Critics looks at their lastest, NEVER LAND: CAVE OF THE DARK WIND.

UNVEILED, a memoir by Deborah Kanafani walks an American woman through life and love in the Middle East.

And The Barefoot Contessa is back with two new cookbooks.

From the YouTube description:

In this exclusive video chat, Michael Artsis talks with New York Times best-selling author James Grippando about his latest thriller, “Born to Run”, the latest in his Jack Swyteck series.

Ani Difranco takes on poetry.

Sista Soulja teases her new novel while comparing herself to Shakespeare.

Richard Wright’s daughter looks back at the author’s legacy in the Centennial year of his birth.

Joseph Heller’s daughter bashes the literary efforts of Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.

The AP and the New York Times wrap up the goings on at the National Book Awards.

I don’t know what’s going on with the internet today, but the first book review I found was - no lie - illustrated and all about penises.  The second is 52 WAYS TO CHEAT AT POKER.  I’m almost afraid to go on…

Well this one isn’t so bad.  Could even be useful to a type.  Monsters and Critics offers their opinion of SOLAR GARDENING by Leandre Poisson and Gretchen Vogel.

PoliceOne.com is featuring BLOOD LESSONS: WHAT COPS CAN LEARN FROM LIFE OR DEATH ENCOUNTERS.

And Iris Johansen is back with a new thriller, DARK SUMMER.

For Oscar:

Wally Lamb is back with his first novel in a decade.

Guy Dammann weighs in on the importance of preserving the personality of French literature.

Nino Ricci takes the award for the English fiction category of the Governor General’s Literary Awards for his novel The Origin of Species.

“Meh” makes it into the Collins English Dictionary. Appleyard makes the case for crediting Auden.

R.I.P. Donald Finkel

Watercolor Callisto
(Trish Stewart)

Wax repels water.
So I drew what I could not see,
connecting the dots blind,
on the surface first.

I pressed too hard – a sacrifice of precision
for urgency.
So thirsty and oh so dizzy,
my desperation born of age and monotony.

I bit my dry lip,
swiped my hand and blew
the crumbled bits of crayon from the page.
Flecks scattered to the edge,
then beyond.

Dot line dot streak dot line dot.
Invisible to my eye until revealed in stained relief.

The bristles laden with color –
blue, black, blue.
And then we see her;
Callisto in her night sky
BearMother sent to the heavens but
never to roam below the horizon,
never to drink.

Callisto, I, Callisto.

I gave her a lake –
black, blue, black –
White peeking through.
I placed her reflection
on moon-streaked water –
yellow, white, yellow, blur.
Her thirst quenched.

Then imagined the current
ending her True North Spinning -
the waves teaching her to dance.

Freeing Callisto, freeing me,
in watercolor relief.

(Read more of Trish Stewart’s poetry here)

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

.

.

Reviews, reviews. Joe Stephens of The Washington Post reviews the FBI files on Norman Mailer, and their reviews of his work, as well as his comings and goings.

Nancy Horan’s LOVING FRANK was a bargain treasure for lit-sleuth Ann Livermore.

The comics! They are everywhere. Here’s a good pageful of ‘em.

SCI-PHI: PHILOSOPHY FROM SOCRATES TO SCHWARZENEGGER looks at classical philosophy filtered through science fiction films.

The occult and the resultant social phobia of it inspired John Demos to THE ENEMY WITHIN: 2,000 YEARS OF WITCH-HUNTING IN THE WESTERN WORLD.

From the Metacafe description:

Meet the real living legend of The Old Man of the Sea - Gregorio Fuentes. The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway’s most enduring works and was the winner of the noble prize for literature in 1954. View this rare interview with Gregorio Fuentes. Reliving their tales and giving information on what it was like to be both Ernest Hemingway’s best friend and his boat captain of the Pilar.

Hemingway’s Boat Captain - Gregorio Fuentes - Watch a funny movie here

J.E. Robertson has posted an insightful essay on poetry as “a vehicle of meaning”.

A British lawyer who wrote a memoir recounting childhood abuse is being sued by her mother.

Michelle Obama comic book on the way.

io9 presents “5 Things I Learned About Women from the James Bond Books”

 John Zuarino chats it up with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore in Bookslut’s Indie Heartthrob Interview Series.