George Elliott Clarke looks at Derek Walcott’s 16th collection of poems, White Egrets, and what it says about its author, now 80 years old. (The Chronicle Herald)

Take a virtual tour of the National Book Fair. (Washington Post)

Lynn Neary profiles Norwegian author Per Petterson. (NPR)

Elif Batuman offers an excellent overview of the mysteries of the much-contested Kafka papers. (New York Times)

Ed Pilkington spends a day with Jonathan Franzen. (The Guardian)

Don Delillo muses on whether “poetry needs paper”. (Jacket Copy)

Something tells me Salman Rushdie isn’t a big fan of the British monarchy. (Hindustan Times)

Elizabeth Gaskell takes her place in the pantheon of British literature, Poets’ Corner. (The Independent)

“On this day in 1957 West Side Story opened at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater for a run of 732 performances. Jerome Robbins first saw his modern Romeo and Juliet as a Jewish-Catholic conflict fought on New York City’s east side; when the switch was made to Puerto Rican-”American” and the west side, Leonard Bernstein said he started to “hear rhythms and pulses” and “feel the form.”" (Today in Literature)

“Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.”

-John Cheever

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Comedienne and author, Kristen Schaal launches, THE SEXY BOOK OF SEXY SEX - THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SEX: UNABRIDGED, UN-SPELL-CHECKED, AND UNCIRCUMCISED.  That it’s reviewed as hilarious, yet over-the-top really doesn’t come as any surprise.

Brace yourself and don’t eat dinner yet.  Here’s a look at YUCK! THE THINGS PEOPLE EAT, by Neil Setchfield.

A page of picks at The New Yorker could pad your to-be-read list, if only you’d let it.

Stephanie Barron’s Jane Austen series is now ten books deep and her latest, JANE AUSTEN AND THE MADNESS OF LORD BYRON, is a hit in Denver.

From the YouTube description:

Charmaine White Face (Zumila Wobaga), a member of the Oglala band of the Tetons of the Great Sioux Nation (Tetuwan Oceti Sakowin), has had a multi-faceted career as college science instructor, political columnist, and activist. White Face is a former treasurer of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the author of TESTIMONY FOR THE INNOCENT (Brunswick, ME: Audenreed Press, 1998), a book about financial corruption in tribal government.

In this video, White Face provides a Lakota spiritual perspective on livestock production that occurs in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota.

This video is an excerpt from Charmaine White Face’s interview in WESTERN TURF WARS: THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC LANDS RANCHING ( http://www.westernturfwars.com ).

Seamus Heaney explains why he lives “in panic over the next poem”. (BBC)

M.A. Orthofer passes along that Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe has won the $300,000 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. (The Literary Saloon)

Steven Levingston surveys a variety of authors at the National Book Festival on the “power of the pen” to change the world. (Washington Post)

In related news, Nigerian Nobel winner Wole Soyinka has launched a political party in advance of his country’s elections. (BBC)

Andrew O’Hehir shares his thoughts on the “lovely and strange docudrama”, “Howl”. (Salon)

If you fancy yourself a travel writer, this might be the contest for you. (Guardian)

Jake Kerridge profiles German author Daniel Kehlmann. (Telegraph)

Weekends are always a gret time to catch up on some author interviews. (Publishers Weekly)

Enjoy an entertaining look at (and listen to) writer Sonny Brewer, who looks back at a lifetime of day jobs. (NPR)

Sarah Crown muses on whether characters bearing authors’ names are the province of male writers.  (Guardian Books Blog)

On this day in 1933 Ring Lardner died at the age of forty-eight, from a heart attack, tuberculosis and the cumulative effects of alcoholism. Lardner’s wide-eyed, bush-league and “wise boob” characters made him the toast of the sports pages and popular magazines, and introduced “talk” as the “specifically American contribution to literature.” (Today in Literature)

“The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.”

-Jim Rohn

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Forty years out from his death, authors Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber, document what it took - BECOMING JIMI HENDRIX.

RUSSIAN WINTER, a new novel by Daphne Kalotay, dosen’t go over all that well in Minneapolis.

Slate Magazine endorses Kwame Anthony Appiah’s, THE HONOR CODE: HOW MORAL REVOLUTIONS HAPPEN.

Astronomy.com sings the virtues of Michael E. Bakich’s, 1,001 CELESTIAL WONDERS TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE.

Danielle Steel denies she’s a romance writer:

Happy National Punctuation Day. (Seattle Times)

Crime writer Peter Robinson nabs the $10,000 Harboufront Festival Prize. (National Post)

Jackie Wang pisses on the grave of Norman Mailer. (HTMLGIANT)

Thomas Spence offers some advice to parents of boys on encouraging reading. (Wall Street Journal)

MaryannYin reports on two new Mark Twain exhibits in the New England area. (GalleyCat)

Was John Milton a dirty boy? (The Guardian)

Tanya Paperny shares her views on how writers go about developing their own unique voices. (LitDrift)

Ming Holden offers up a dispatch from The Writers and Literary Translators International Congress in Istanbul. (Huffington Post)

eBook sales jumped significantly in July. (Publishers Weekly)

M.A. Orthofer offers up some commentary on Vaclav Klaus’ literary prize. (The Literary Saloon)

“On this day in 1991 Theodor Seuss Geisel died, at the age of eighty-seven. Geisel turned to children’s books in his late twenties, when his job creating ads for “Flit” insect repellent — his “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” became a household slogan across America — left him well-off and bored. The next fifty years brought forty-eight books, three Oscars, two Emmys and a Pulitzer.” (Today in Literature)

“Every man’s memory is his private literature.”

-Aldous Huxley

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The Windy City Times proclaims PARTY ANIMALS: A HOLLYWOOD TALE OF SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK-N-ROLL STARRING THE FABULOUS ALAN CARR, by Robert Hofler, primarily for the most avid tinsel-town sniffers.

Library Journal gives us a peek at some new sci-fi novels.

With TO THE END OF THE LAND, author David Grossman pulls more good buzz than ever; this time from The Economist.

Timing and plotting earn Robert Hallenga a good review for his latest, SNAKEWOMAN OF LITTLE EGYPT.

From the NationalTheatre YouTube description:

Watch a short interview with writer J T Rogers in which he talks about the origins of Blood and Gifts, how he researched it and the themes within it.

Georgianne Nienaber remembers Jill Johnston. (Huffington Post)

Jane Ciabattari chats it up with “China’s Chekhov”, Yiyun Li. (The Daily Beast)

Imogen Russell Williams wants you to pick your Brontë team. (Guardian Books Blog)

Joanne Kaufman examines “the stigma of paperback originals”. (Wall Street Journal)

Jade Shames goes in-depth with Tao Lin. (LAWeekly)

Maryann Yin digs into why what literary agents often don’t share in their rejection letters. (GalleyCat)

Laura Miller wades into the British debate over present tense narration. (Salon)

Philip Stone crunches the numbers to determine what a Booker boost really looks like. (theBookseller.com)

M. Rebekah Otto looks at her favorite authors’ favorite authors. (The Millions)

“On this day in 1819, twenty-five-year-old John Keats wrote to his friend, Charles Brown, to say that he was giving up poetry for journalism. This is also the first day of autumn; four days earlier in 1819 Keats had written “To Autumn,” now one of his most popular poems, and one which many critics regard as “flawless in structure, texture, tone, and rhythm.”" (Today in Literature)

“Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.”

- Jean Cocteau

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I always enjoy running across a book that will sell well only just the merit of its title alone.  Case in point: Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson’s HOW TO DEFEAT YOUR OWN CLONE (AND OTHER TIPS FOR SURVIVING THE BIOTECH REVOLUTION).

Justice Stephen Breyer expounds on MAKING OUR DEMOCRACY WORK: A JUDGE’S VIEW, but fails to convince The Los Angeles Times of his prescription.

Jon Pineda’s memoir and ode to his paraplegic sister, SLEEP IN ME, draws praise and tears in Atlanta.

THE WASTE LAND AND OTHER POEMS, by John Beer, fares well at The Quarterly Conversation.

Allison Pearson discusses the crippling depression that plagued her during the writing of her latest book, I Think I Love You. (The Independent)

The University of Wales announces the shortlist for the 2010 Dylan Thomas Prize. (Official Site)

Angela Stubbs chats it up with Gina Frangello about her new collection of stories, Slut Lullabies. (The Rumpus)

Spencer Bailey offers some reading recommendations for the “spiritually starved”. (The Daily Beast)

Lesley McDowell examines the delicate dance of authors and critics. (Guardian Books Blog)

Adrian Chen offers Howard Fineman some advice about writing on the internet. (Gawker)

PEN names László Jakab Orsós as new Director of the World Voices Festival and Public Programs. (PEN America)

Lorna Bradbury looks at the unlikely resurrection of Enid Blyton’s “famous five”. (Telegraph)

R.I.P. Jill Johnston, author, critic, gay rights activist. (Bay Windows)

“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. The first Scrolls were discovered in the caves of Qumran by Bedouin shepherds in 1947, but decades of delay in deciphering them prompted this controversial release of a microfilm version of “the greatest archeological find in history.”" (Today in Literature)

“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.”

-E.M. Forster

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Hear The New York Times‘ opinion on the latest books that have drawn their attention (plus author interviews) in their online podcast book review feature.

THE FIRST LADIES OF ROME: THE WOMEN BEHIND THE CAESARS, by Annelise Freisenbruch, sounds pretty interesting.

The Washington Times has a look at RED STATE UPRISING: HOW TO TAKE BACK AMERICA, by Erick Erickson and Lewis K. Uhler.  Presumably the book also says what America shall be taken back from.

Pad your football knowledge and your inspiration with Merril Hoge’s FIND A WAY: THREE WORDS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE.

Here’s a novel to spin your head, or at least some head over there at The California Literary Review, HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE, by Charles Yu.

From the SciFiBookClub YouTube description:

Here’s our exclusive sit-down with Justin Cronin, author of “The Passage,” which is being hailed as one of the must-reads of the summer–and year. We agree–we can’t put it down! Has anybody else been reading it? What do you think?