“Publishers don’t nurse you; they buy and sell you.”

-P D James

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Dave Wood has a couple to start off the holiday weekend.  It’s nice because neither of them have anything to do with turkey or frantic pre-dawn shopping.

Ingrid Abramovitch tells us all about RESTORING A HOUSE IN THE CITY.

But since it is the day before Thanksgiving, we really should talk about cooking.  Or at least Library Journal should talk about books that talk about cooking.

And for the kiddies, check out Publishers Weekly’s latest roundup of children’s books.

From the YouTube description:

Poet, novelist, essayist Adam Zagajewski (born 1945) is considered one of the Generation of 68 or New Wave writers in Poland; his early work was protest poetry, though he has moved away from that emphasis in his later work. The reviewer Joachim T. Baer noted in World Literature Today that Zagajewskis themes are the night, dreams, history and time, infinity and eternity, silence and death. Writing of Zagajewskis 1991 collection of poems, Canvas, poet and reviewer Robert Pinsky commented that the poems are about the presence of the past in ordinary life: history not as chronicle of the dead, or an anima to be illuminated by some doctrine, but as an immense, sometimes subtle force inhering in what people see and feel every day—and in the ways we see and feel. Nothing could take the reader in a direction more contrary to todays cult of the excitements of self than to follow Zagajewski as he unspools his seductive praise of serenity, sympathy, forbearance; of the calm and courage of an ordinary life, wrote Susan Sontag.

Will King write a sequel to The Shining? (EW.com)

Thomas Christensen hits a home run with his glossary of book publishing terms. (rightreading.com)

Michael Wolff call for literate people to boycott books until publishers stop shoveling celebrity memoirs and ghost-written books. (newser.com)

Jess Sauer recaps an evening with Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman in Austin. (The Rumpus)

Clive James in the running for the 2009 Costa Book Award. (AAP)

Tom Nissley chats it up with The Lost Symbol’s book designer Michael J. Windsor. (Onmivoracious)

China lines up with writers in the Google Books battle. (The Independent)

Writer Antonio Tabucchi is being sued by the president of the Italian senate for libel. (The Literary Saloon)

Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg scores a million dollar book deal worth Penguin. (GalleyCat)

On this day in 1970, Japanese novelist and three-time Nobel nominee Yukio Mishima committed hara-kiri. (Today in Literature)

“The business of the poet and novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.”

-Thomas Hardy

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James McCommons gets his thoughts in before train travel becomes, as some fear, obsolete in WAITING ON A TRAIN: THE EMBATTLED FUTURE OF PASSENGER RAIL SERVICE - A YEAR SPENT RIDING ACROSS AMERICA.

French author, Jean-Claude Mourlevat, broods to good result in his latest Young Adult novel, WINTER’S END.

The Horn Book Magazine gives a sneak peak sampling of its wonderful reviews page for the November/December issue.

Ian Mortimer continues his research into English Monarchs.  He’s now up to Henry V and frames his findings through the lens of 1415: HENRY V’S YEAR OF GLORY.

Prepare to be amazed.  (From the YouTube description - Film for NZ Book Council Produced by Colenso BBDO Animated by Andersen M Studio)