“You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality.”

-Margaret Atwood

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The New York Times set us up with a review list of what’s new in paperback releases.

RUBY’S SPOON, by Anna Lawrence Pietroni, is hailed as a wonderful (and creepy) debit novel.

Abigail Green sifts the ashes of a largely lost personal history and puts together MOSES MONTEFIORE: JEWISH LIBERATOR, IMPERIAL HERO.

Journalist Sebastian Junger trains his expertise on the details of WAR.

The South Park kids write an obscene novel…

Watch the full episode here:

Israeli Arab writer Ala Hlehel goes to court seeking permission to collect a literary prize. (Haaretz)

Scholastic chairman Dick Robinson calls for a global literacy campaign at the Bologna Book Fair. (Publishers Weekly)

M.A. Orthofer comments on the release of the shortlist for the “lost” 1970 Booker Prize. (The Literary Saloon)

Imogen Russell Williams conjures up her favorite literary cravings. (Guardian Books Blog)

Jeff Rivera chats it up with literary agent Paige Wheeler. (GalleyCat)

Carrie Vaughn relates her adventures in changing publishers. (GENREALITY)

R.I.P. Patricia Wrightson, children’s author. (CBC)

R.I.P. Ai, poet. (LATimes)

“On this day in 1892 Walt Whitman died. The high and controversial emotions which surrounded Whitman in life attended his death: in the same issue that carried his obituary, the New York Times declared that he could not be called “a great poet unless we deny poetry to be an art,” while one funeral speech declared that “He walked among men, among writers, among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milliners and tailors, with the unconscious majesty of an antique god.”" (Today in Literature)

“In my 30s I used to go to the gym even though I hated it. The purpose of ­going to the gym was to postpone the day when I would stop going. That’s what writing is to me: a way of ­postponing the day when I won’t do it any more, the day when I will sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from perfect bliss.”

-Geoff Dyer

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The Queensberry Rules, a boxing blog, highly recommends Sam Sheridan’s A FIGHTER’S MIND: INSIDE THE MENTAL GAME.

Oh my.  Sharon Newman goes there and, subsequently, I want to now as well.  The Trades reviews her book, THE REAL HISTORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD: APOCALYPTIC TRADITIONS FROM REVELATION AND NOSTRADAMUS TO Y2K AND 2012.

Kirkus Reviews grudgingly admits that there will be satisfied fans of Ann Brashare’s MY NAME IS MEMORY.

Karl Marlantes (Marine and Rhodes Scholar in case you get worried) has worked on his novel MATTERHORN for thirty-three years.  And it’s only just gone to press!  USA Today says it’s good for all the work.

From the KeplersBooks YouTube description:

Lionel Shriver discusses her book “So Much For That” at Kepler’s Books March 15th 2010:

Why is Russia turning its back on Tolstoy? (Telegraph)

A rare signed first edition of George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris fetches £86,000 at auction. (The Independent)

Adrian Chen (and the comment brigade) have a bit of sport with actor (and new MFA) James Franco’s fiction. (Gawker)

Belgian illustrator and author Kitty Crowther takes the 2010 Astrid Lindgren Memorial award, along with 5 million kroner. (BBC)

Nigel Farndale chats it up with the darkly intoxicating Lionel Shriver. (Telegraph)

Diane Roback serves up some coverage of the Bologna Fair. (Publishers Weekly)

The search for Oxford’s new poetry professor may offer some new drama. (The Independent)

Sam Jordison looks back at the significance of Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1970 Hugo win. (Guardian Books Blog)

ScrollMotion bigwig predicts the future of kids’ books for the iPad. (School Library Journal)

Mary Higgins Clark buys a seat on the Chicago Board Options Exchange for $2.95 million. (Reuters)

R.I.P. Harold McGraw, Jr., publishing heavyweight. (Publishers Weekly)

“On this day in 1957, U.S. Customs agents seized 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl on the grounds of obscenity. Ginsberg and his lawyers were not hopeful when they learned that the trial judge was a Sunday school teacher who had recently sentenced five shoplifters to a screening of The Ten Commandments, but the ruling was unequivocally for the poem.” (Today in Literature)

“Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.”

-Roddy Doyle

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The New York Times hedges short of all-out praise for Miranda Carter’s GEORGE, NICHOLAS, AND WILHELM: THREE ROYAL COUSINS AND THE ROAD TO WORLD WAR I but, clearly, finds a good amount of merit in it.

And here’s an index page of The Times’ Book Review Podcast Series, with each week’s show is available for download.

Comedian Chelsea Handler brings down the house with her latest book, CHELSEA CHELSEA BANG BANG.

NEXT by James Hynes earns raves for its tone and topicality from The Washington Post’s Book World section.

The 2010 Pen/Faulkner fiction prize winner’s recent entertaining appearance on ‘The Colbert Report’:

Laura Skandera Trombley looks back at Mark Twain, America’s “first modern celebrity.” (The Daily Beast)

War Dances earns Sherman Alexie the 2010 Pen/Faulkner fiction prize. (Washington Post)

Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch creator Michael Connelly sues Paramount, claiming the studio “used Hollywood accounting to overcharge him for repurchasing rights to two of his novels the studio did not make into movies.” (Courthouse News Service)

Eric Puchner muses on what makes a good (and, for that matter, a bad) book title. (The Rumpus)

John Burnside defends Ted Hughes’ inclusion in Poets’ Corner. (Guardian Books Blog)

Simon Elegant lunches with Chinese writer Mo Yan. (TIME)

Margaret Atwood and Amitav Ghosh share the Dan David Prize (and a million bucks) for the ‘2010 Present’ category. (Dan David Prize)

Jeff Rivera talks to agent Andrea Somberg about (among other things) her quest for Post-Apocalyptic fiction. (GalleyCat)

Blast from the past: Hemingway tells Reader’s Digest to shove it. (Letters of Note)

Catherine Lacey makes fun of some notable authors’ photos. (HTMLGIANT)

Brigid Alverson chats it up with J. Torres about the return of Alison Dare. (Publishers Weekly)

“On this day in 1882 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died, at the age of seventy-five. Longfellow was the most popular, venerated and taught American poet of his day. Such a pedestal invited comedy, or so Mark Twain thought until he tried to satirize Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes before a crowd of their fans.” (Today in Literature)

“You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.”

-Will Self

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The glow of gadget screens isn’t the most flattering light for human integrity and Sebastian Faulks takes full advantage of the glare in his latest book, A WEEK IN DECEMBER.

Alafair Burke’s Ellie Hatcher series gets philosophical amidst all the anxious page-turning in 212.

Adelaide’s Independent Weekly makes like you might laugh your face off over comedian Tony Martin’s book, A NEST OF OCCASIONALS.

A LOOK TO THE STARS by Buzz Aldrin is enthusiastically reviewed by a namesake. Neat!

From the Barnes & Noble “Tagged” description:

Molly welcomes Children’s Poet Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman to the Studio to celebrate National Poetry Month:

Chilean writer Hernan Rivera Leteliertakes Spain’s prestigious Alfaguara Novel Prize for his novel El arte de la resurreccion (The Art of Resurrection). (Latin American Herald Tribune)

Ted Hughes to be commemorated alongside Chaucer and Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner. (The Independent)

Jeff Kinney revels in the onscreen success of ‘Wimpy Kid.’ (cleveland.com)

Akie Bermiss and Molly Schoemann examine the ethical implications of posthumous publishing, specifically of Salinger’s rumored unpublished works. (The Perpetual Post)

eReaders eat each other: Amazon reveals a Kindle app for the iPad. (GalleyCat)

Martin Amis looks back at his “mentor, critic and father,” Kingsley. (NYTimes)

Peruse some images of upcoming iPad apps. (PCWorld)

Peter Robbins opens the floor for a mass confession of cliches. (Guardian Books Blog)

LeVar Burton: “Reading Rainbow” might be back. (GalleyCat)

” On this day in 1917 Leonard and Virginia Woolf purchased a small, used handpress; a month later, it was delivered to Hogarth House, their West London home, and the Hogarth Press was born. Over the next three decades the Woolfs would refine their “rather eccentric and amusing printing antics”, eventually publishing 525 titles over three decades, many of them by other influential modernists and most of them collector’s items today.” (Today in Literature)

“Defend yourself. Find out what keeps you happy, motivated and creative.”

-AL Kennedy

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Actress-now-author Jennifer Love-Hewitt dispenses dating advice from a self-proclaimed loveaholic in THE DAY I SHOT CUPID.

Start ‘em young. That’s Mike Lupica’s philosophy for reading and for the love of baseball.  To that end, he offers a young audience his latest novel, THE BATBOY.

The Scotsman endorses Hugh Ambrose’s WWII tome, THE PACIFIC.

ON EVIL by Terry Eagleton tackles the topic to some satisfaction over at The Washington Times.

From the YouTube description:

To commemorate the centenary of the birth of one of Britain’s most influential and best-loved poets, this film combines dramatisations of telling events in the life of WH Auden with interviews from the TV and radio archives and extracts from Auden’s poetry, notebooks, letters and journals.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Best selling author Philip Pullman threatened over his new book on Jesus Christ. (Telegraph)

Robert McCrum attempts to decipher the class structure in British literature. (Guardian Books Blog)

AgentInbox lands John Corey Whaley an agent who, in turn, lands him a book deal. (Publishers Weekly)

Philip Hensher on why Jane Austen would never win the Booker. (The Independent)

An archive of letters from the collections of Rosamond Lehmann and Frances Partridge reveals new details on the suicide of Virginia Woolf. (NYTimes)

A British library has received a book that was 45 years overdue. (LATimes)

Ann Arbor crime novelist Lisa Reardon pleads guilty to shooting her father. (AnnArbor.com)

John Timpane looks at the changes on tap if Google gets its way. (Seattle Times)

Carol Rumens is back with a new poem of the week: “My Sweetest Lesbia” by Thomas Campion. (Guardian Books Blog)

“On this day in 1908 the Western writer Louis L’Amour was born in Jamestown, North Dakota. L’Amour wrote 113 books, 260 million copies of which have been sold worldwide in dozens of languages, and thirty of which have been turned into movies. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, reveals an even more prodigious love of life and reading.” (Today in Literature)