-William Peter Blatty

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You’ve had yer fun, so now it’s time to buckle down and crack the books — the real books.  The New York Times previews the Fall season’s weightier selections on the New Releases shelf.

Steve Rattner shares his privileged angle of the Obama administrations inspiration and intention for last year’s auto industry bailout in OVERHAUL: AN INSIDER’S ACCOUNT OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S EMERGENCY RESCUE OF THE AUTO INDUSTRY.

I’ve never seen a review of an official prayer book before, but here you go.  There’s a new MAHZOR LEV SHALEM for Judaic High Holidays.

Watch as a book-loving ape and a tech-savvy donkey exchange words…from bestselling author Lane Smith comes this adorable nod to traditional books.

Irene Lacher chats it up with crime novelist James Ellroy. (LATimes)

Author Joe McGinniss is pulling up stakes and moving on from his tenure as Sarah Palin’s next door neighbor. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Lane Smith discusses his latest, It’s a Book. (Speakeasy)

Will Jerry Seinfeld be outed as author Ted L Nancy? (Herald Sun)

Book Beast previews some juicy revelations from Meghan McCain’s Dirty Sexy Politics. (The Daily Beast)

Goethe Medal winner Fuad Rifka talks to Rainer Traube about a life “dedicated to the German language”. (Qantara.de)

Robert McCrum relates his Kafkaesque experience with Waterstone’s. (Guardian Books Blog)

NPR presents an audio interview with John Irving on the novelist’s art. (On Point Radio)

Government minister urges Nigerians read indigenous literature “to promote cultural values and norms”. (The Sunday Observer)

“On this day in 1890, thirty-two year-old Joseph Conrad took command of a small stern-wheeler for the trip down the Congo river from Stanley Falls (now Boyoma Falls) to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa). Though Conrad was not exposed to the full horror that Marlow witnessed and felt beckon, these experiences were the genesis of Heart of Darkness, published twelve years later.” (Today in Literature)

-John Jakes

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USA Today weighs in on WOLF HALL, by Hilary Mantel, on the occasion of its paperback release.

BODY WORK, by Sarah Paretsky, brings back P.I., V. I. Warshawski, and does so in fine form, they say.

And Sara Gruen’s latest, APE HOUSE, gets the treatment (and a warm reception) at The New York Times.

Payne Harrison’s STORMING INTREPID was a New York Times Bestseller and a Cold War classic that helped define the techno-thriller genre.

Now with EUROSTORM he weaves his narrative magic yet again — this time aboard the Eurostar bullet train as it races under the English Channel from London to Paris. Sealed within the vault of an “impregnable” security car is a substance so secret and so lethal that only a handful of “mandarins” within Her Majesty’s Government even know of its existence.