Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude named most influential book of the last 25 years. (Telegraph)

Friends of the Seattle Public Library Book Sale to offer up nearly a quarter million items today. (Seattle Times)

Poets House gets new digs in Battery Park. (NY Times)

Seth Rogan writes an episode of The Simpsons. (AP)

M.A. Orthofer snarks his way through the top twenty ‘Best of the Millennium’ works of fiction at The Millions. (The Literary Saloon)

Shannon Firth takes a look back at William Faulkner on the 112th anniversary of his birth. (Finding Dulcinea)

Friends and colleagues of the late author E. Lynn Harris rally to promote the release of his final novel. (Publishers Weekly)

Is the literary establishment ignoring a new golden age of British science fiction? (Guardian Books Blog)

Shani Petroff, author of the “Bedeviled” young adult series, discusses the necessity of forging on through rejection. (mediabistro.com)

On this day in 1957, West Side Story opened at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater. (Today in Literature)

Technical difficulties and apologies fill the space where Friday’s features should have been.

Please stand by and we’ll all soon forget the gap.

“If writers were good businessmen, they’d have too much sense to be writers.”

-Irvin S. Cobb

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Momsword.org is a big fan of Karen Deerwester’s THE ENTITLEMENT-FREE CHILD, a new how-to guide for the advancement of keeping your children from being insufferable.

The New Republic has three pages worth of its own opinion on GODDESS OF THE MARKET: AYN RAND AND THE AMERICAN RIGHT, and their readers have pages and pages more in interesting agreement and rebuttal.  Wade in.  Bring a lunch.

THE PROMISED WORLD, a novel by Lisa Tucker that I happen to be reading just exactly right now, gets a good write up in the Denver Post.  I think.  I didn’t look too closely, because I didn’t want any spoilers.

WHERE I MUST GO: A NOVEL, by Angela Jackson, is dubbed ‘noteworthy’ in ForeWord Magazine.

Chuck Palahniuk discusses his latest novel, Pygmy:

On this day in 1991, Theodor Seuss Geisel died at the age of eighty-seven. (Today in Literature)

“Juno” screenwriter Diablo Cody set to adapt and produce “Sweet Valley High” for the big screen. (GalleyCat)

Porter Shreve chats it up with novelist Donald Ray Pollock. (The Rumpus)

Ellen Hopkins anti-censorship poem becomes manifesto for Banned Books Week. (The Guardian)

Dan Brown overtakes Bill Clinton in the record books. (The Daily News)

French authors and publishers to square off with Google today. (AFP)

IREX jumps into the eReader market. (PC World)

Mike Shatzkin says branding is now more important than ever for publishers. (The Shatzkin Files)

Test your knowledge of the fictional works of British MPs. (BBC)

R.I.P. Norman Katkov, scriptwriter and novelist. (LA Times)

“A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced courtesy for the elderly writer who wants to display the trophies of his youth, along with his trout flies.”

-John Cheever

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Professor Benny Morris holds court on the left side of the yard and elaborates on ONE STATE, TWO STATES: RESOLVING THE ISRAEL/PALESTINE CONFLICT.

One of my favorite writers, Gregory Maguire, has put out his take on another of my favorites in MAKING MISCHIEF: A MAURICE SENDAK APPRECIATION.

GALILEO’S DREAM, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is well-received at January Magazine.

What we all hope not to need or not to facilitate is the very thing that Steve Farber and Harlan Abrahams lay out for us in ON THE LIST: FIXING AMERICA’S FAILING ORGAN TRANSPLANT SYSTEM.

From the Barnes and Noble “Tagged” description:

Molly talks with Louise Penny, author of the latest B&N Recommends selection, The Brutal Telling:

Andy Ross gets the scoop on 30+ years of copy editing at The New Yorker from Mary Norris. (Ask the Agent)

Lowbrow vs. highbrow literature: the debate rages on. (EW Shelf Life)

Peter Simpson tries to figure out Margaret Atwood’s perfomance art. (Canada.com)

American authors and publishers ask for a delay in the Google Book case. (AFP)

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Committee announced two winners of the prestigious prize with a $10,000 honorarium: Richard Bausch for fiction and Benjamin Skinner for nonfiction. (GalleyCat)

Jenny Sanford, wife of disgraced South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, scores a deal with Ballantine for her “inspirational memoir”. (Publishers Weekly)

McSweeney’s ventures into the iPhone and iPod. (Macworld UK)

Dan Brown’s Kindle numbers come back down to earth. (Business Insider)

John Walsh reports on the Woodstock Literary Festival. (The Independent)

M.A.Orthofer analyzes the odds for the Nobel Prize in Literature. (The Literary Saloon)

Alison Flood examines the allegations of sexism over the British Fantasy Society’s all-male horror anthology… (The Guardian)

…while David Barnett digs a little deeper into the mentality (and marketing) that leads to such pigeonholing. (The Guardian)

On this day in 1819, twenty-five-year-old John Keats wrote to Charles Brown that he was giving up on poetry, four days after completing “Autumn”. (Today in Literature)

“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”

-Nelson Mandela

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Monsters & Critics previews Mary Forsberg Weiland’s upcoming memoir, FALL TO PIECES: A MEMOIR OF DRUGS, ROCK ‘N’ ROLL, AND MENTAL ILLNESS.

Cormac MCCarthy’s THE ROAD is back in the review pages now that the film adaptation is imminent.

THE MAGICIAN’S ELEPHANT earns Kate DiCamillo a wonderful review at The Christian Science Monitor.

For the historian and the explorer (and for those elements in all of us), Douglas Hunter offers HENRY HUDSON AND THE VOYAGE THAT REDREW THE MAP OF THE NEW WORLD.

From the Scholastic description on YouTube:

Norman Bridwell, the author and illustrator of the classic Clifford books, talks about where he came up with the idea to create the famous Big Red Dog. His newest book, Clifford the Champion, will be on sale in October.

Banned Books Week starts this Saturday, September 26. (ALA)

If James Palumbo’s Tomas is a joke, Sam Jordison ain’t getting it. (The Guardian)

The smart money’s on Amos Oz for this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. (Monsters and Critics)

Dave Eggers to receive the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York in November. (Baynewser)

Nearly 50 writers, editors and critics speculate on “The Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far)”. (The Millions)

Are we “in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization”? (Wired)

Ralph Nader is now a novelist. (Washington Post)

Caleb Crain explores the impact of the Great Depression on culture. (The New Yorker)

Rozalia Jovanovic previews the upcoming New Yorker Festival. (The Rumpus)

John D.  and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius award winners” announced. (NYT)

On this day in 1991 the Dead Sea Scrolls were made available to the public for the first time by the Huntington Library in California. (Today in Literature)

“I write to escape … to escape poverty.”

-Edgar Rice Burroughs

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The other Charleston (no, not that one; the one in Illinois) praises Pat Conroy’s depiction of the South Carolina one and the story he’s carved out of the area SOUTH OF BROAD.

ESPN put out a book for snowboarders or people who admire pictures of people flying just above any sense and a snow-capped peak.  Here’s a preview of OUT WEST: SNOWBOARDING, WESTBEACH, AND A NEW CANADIAN DREAM, by Dano Pendygrasse.

Can a big healthcare bill slug its way out of a recalcitrant legislative branch?  It’s been done before.  David Blumenthal and James Morone tell us how it all went down in, THE HEART OF POWER: HEALTH AND POLITICS IN THE OVAL OFFICE.

The Economist compares and contrasts two new releases on Christianity.

Monty Python’s classic “Northern Playwright” sketch (bonus Scotsman on a horse…):

David Mattin profiles reclusive South African author JM Coatzee… (The National)

Meanwhile, M.A. Orthofer rounds up reviews of the film adaptation of Coatzee’s Disgrace. (The Literary Saloon)

Ron Hogan tries to get to the bottom of the conspiracy behind the release date of The Lost Symbol. (GalleyCat)

Robert McCrum has had just about enough of subtitles. (The Guardian)

Author Elaine Scott filed a lawsuit last week against Scribd, alleging the company violated hers (and other’s) copyrights and that they “shamelessly profit” from stolen works and “built a technology that’s broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale.” Scribd describes the charges as “without merit”. (theBookseller.com)

Uwem Akpan is humbled by Oprah’s selection of his work for her book club. (Reuters)

Hatchette Audio to release an abridged serialization of Iain M. Banks’ Transition on iTunes in the hopes of drawing them in to pay for the whole enchilada. (NYT)

Rozalia Jovanovic shares her experiences as the Brooklyn Book Festival in a delightfully entertaining recap. (The Rumpus)

Aleksandar Hemon discusses his work and its inextricable link to the city of his birth, Sarajevo. (Deutsche Welle)

Garrison Keillor talks about his recent stroke and the insights it gave him into America’s healthcare debate. (The Independent)

Christopher Fowler remembers ‘Forgotten Author No. 38: Bram Stoker’. (The Independent)

Happy birthday Stephen King, born on this day in 1947. (Today in Literature)

“The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he’s written it.”

-William Golding

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This Sunday’s NYTimes featured review is Margaret Atwood’s, THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD.  If she’s not so far gone in the routine of big literary fame as to be immune to these sorts of things, she’ll be well pleased with most of this review.

I hope Javier Calvo’s, WONDERFUL WORLD, is as fascinating as The Quarterly Conversation’s review of it.

Library Journal previews a crop of historical biographies.

And a sampling of the reviews in the latest Horn Book Magazine will get us all up to speed on what’s new and quality for children.