David Foster Wallace’s ten favorite novels is a surprising mix of some very popular works. (The Christian Science Monitor)

Arab writers reflect on last year’s Arab Spring. (The Guardian)

The Chicago Tribune Celebrates Ezra Jack Keats’ milestone childrens’ book, THE SNOWY DAY, and its effect, fifty years after it landed. (The Chicago Tribune)

Toni Morrison’s, BELOVED, is in the censor’s crosshairs. Again. (GalleyCat)

A panel of contemporary authors discuss the books they love to give as gifts. (The New York Times)

CNN anchor, Soledad O’Brien, mixes it up with Jodi Cantor, author of the hotly-debated, THE OBAMAS. (KHQ.com)

Author, Jeffrey Zaslow, chats about his examination of weddings in his latest, THE MAGIC ROOM: A STORY ABOUT THE LOVE WE WISH FOR OUR DAUGHTERS. (The Chicago Sun Times)

Novelist, Reginald Hill, dies at 75. RIP. (The News & Star)

“On this day in 1886 Hugh Lofting, writer of the Doctor Dolittle series of children’s books, was born. While growing up in Berkshire, Lofting kept “a combination zoo and natural history museum” in his mother’s linen closet, but Dab-Dab, Gub-Gub, Too-Too, Jip, Polynesia, et al. of Puddlesby-by-the-Marsh were born more from Lofting’s desire to forget adulthood than recall his childhood…” (Today In Literature)

Spot the difference between Waterstone’s and Waterstones. Now, hold on to your ones and zeros, here’s why they did it. (The Independent)

Yesterday it was novels. Today, seek out the poetry that’ll put you in mind of Downton Abbey. (GalleyCat)

It seems as though college students prefer carrying heavy books. (The Daily Bruin)

A trove of no-nonsense about the industry is a good way to kick off the weekend. (How Publishing Really Works)

UK department store chain, Selfridges, puts a library inside its store. Clever. (The Telegraph)

An unknown Brahms composition is discovered tucked into an old book. (Melville House)

The Andrew Lownie Agency clues hopeful writers into what editors are looking for in 2012. (andrewlownie.co.uk)

A publisher weighs in on the state of the ebook. (American Libraries Magazine)

The Horn Book Magazine shows us what we’d find if they picked the Caldecott ballot. (hbook.com)

Rare book dealer, John McWhinnie, dies in a snorkeling accident. He was 43. RIP. (The New York Times)

“On this day in 1898 Emile Zola published his ‘J’Accuse’ letter on the Dreyfus Affair in the French newspaper L’Aurore. In his letter Zola listed eight politicians and military personnel (including the President of the Republic) whom he held responsible for the scapegoat, anti-Semitic conviction of Captain Dreyfus for treason three years earlier…” (Today In Literature)

Kim Jong Nam is poised to spill some ink and opinions over his father, the late Kim Jong Il, in a new book released in Japan. (Japan Times)

The New Republic considers putting a ‘For Sale’ sign in their yard. (The Wall Street Journal)

The popularity of PBS’s ‘Downton Abbey’ spawns an Edwardian book-frenzy. (The New York Times)

A lucky librarian gets an Amazon platform to revive her favorite out-of-print books. (GalleyCat)

Will the kiddies be delighted to get a book in their Happy Meals? We’re about to find out. (The Telegraph)

But they’ll likely be thrilled to hear of the return of CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS. (Publishers Weekly)

Microsoft scales back its gripe with Barnes & Noble’s Nook by one patent. (zdnet.com)

Amazon wrangles a new erotica plagiarism scandal. (Fast Company)

NewsCorp weighs in with the details on the News of the World bribery allegation. (Bloomberg)

“On this day in 1876 Jack London was born, and on this day in 1893, London’s seventeenth birthday, he signed on for an eight-month stint as deck-hand aboard the “Sophie Sutherland,” a San Francisco sealer heading for the China Seas. The sealing voyage gave London his first published story, and eventually his second best-seller — The Sea Wolf…” (Today In Literature)

Lisbeth Salander and her Dragon Tattoo? Yeah, there’s an app for that. (USA Today)

Are you a good writer? Great! That’s about a third of the battle. (The Atlantic)

Thriller writer, Charlie Newton, has good fun sifting real life for his characters’ names. (The Chicago Sun Times)

‘The Joy of Books’ video goes viral, so here’s a look at Sean Ohlenkamp, the man behind the bookstore after-hours party. (Quill & Quire)

The books were so good, the Man Asian Literary Prize committee couldn’t pick just five. (The Los Angeles Times)

Annie Liebovitz finishes her labor of love, PILGRIMAGE, a volume of literature-inspired photography, conceived with her partner, writer, Susan Sontag, before she died. (The Houston Chronicle)

io9 has a look at the new CONAN THE BARBARIAN comics. (io9.com)

McClelland & Stewart, one of Canada’s most prestigious publishers, becomes part of Random House. (The National Post)

JULIE AND THE WOLVES, the 1972 bestselling childrens’ novel, stokes the digital rights scuffle. (The Wall Street Journal)

And because we needed a comic book of the US Constitution… (Publishers Weekly)

“On this day in 1903, novelist and reformer Alan Paton was born in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa. Paton was the Principal of Diepkloof Reformatory in Johannesburg for twelve years; his first and most famous novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, was written in 1946 while he was away from home…” (Today In Literature)

Salman Rushdie is persona non grata with an Indian Muslim group at the Jaipur Literary Festival. (Reuters)

Bestselling fantasy author, R.A. Salvatore, entertains The Boston Globe in his tidy lair. (The Boston Globe)

The BBC adds an ending to Charles Dickens’ last, unfinished work, THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. (The Telegraph)

Penguin’s online writer community hatches an author’s first book deal. (GalleyCat)

The free and unfettered children of literature: are we inside looking out? (The Guardian)

Rick Riordan warps up his series, The Kane Chronicles, with an enormous print-run of THE SERPENT’S SHADOW. (BusinessWire)

Anna Burnside sits down with author, Dennis O’Donnell. (The Scotsman)

Writers and Twitter, a partnership made in, er, somewhere. (The New York Times)

Pennsylvania sports writer, Bob Black, dies at 67. RIP. (PennLive.com)

Pelican Publishing’s, Milburn E. Calhoun, dies at 81. RIP. (NOLA.com)

“On this day in 1845 Robert Browning wrote his first letter to Elizabeth Barrett, so inciting one of the most legendary of literary love stories. The letter belongs to the ‘fan mail’ category — the praise of a thirty-two-year-old up-and-comer for one just six years older and already internationally famous — but it was more than just poet-to-poet…” (Today In Literature)

There will be much excited squealing in certain ranks as LABYRINTH gets a graphic novel prequel. (The Guardian)

George Orwell was a medical guinea pig for a new wonder drug back in 1948. (The Scotsman)

Want a free ereader? Subscribe to the electronic edition of The New York Times. (The New York Times)

Elton John steps up for a book on the AIDS epidemic. (GalleyCat)

With a new edition of Virginia Woolf’s ORLANDO, the actress who played the lead writes an illuminating article on the birth of a modern classic. (The Telegraph)

John le Carré’s backlist moves to Penguin and gets some shiny new cover art. (The Wall Street Journal)

Roald Dahl is honored on British postage stamps. (The Guardian)

Political writer, Tony Blankely, dies. He was 63. (Fox News)

“On this day in 1324 Marco Polo died in Venice, at the age of seventy. The Travels of Marco Polo, dictated by Polo around 1300, several years after his return from decades in the land of Kublai Khan, became an influential book in Renaissance Europe. So dubious were some contemporaries of a vast and grandiose empire to the East that they published Polo’s account as Il Milione, meaning ‘The Million Lies.’…” (Today In Literature)

The Guardian’s book podcast series invites a few authors to weigh in on the state of Science Fiction. (The Guardian)

Gawker blogger fired for using a racial slur in satirical send-up of Kanye West. (The New York Observer)

McSweeney’s, Dave Eggers, had an idea for the multi-taskers. So he published on a shower curtain. (MediaBistro)

Salon Magazine eulogizes the celebrity memoir, as its apparently been murdered by Snooki. (Salon)

Four big names in books are among the six celebrities asked to recall a moment that changed their lives. (The Christian Science Monitor)

Andrew Pettie reacts to Tolkein’s Nobel snubbing 50 years after the fact. (The Telegraph)

2012 may be a banner year for teachy-preachy books. (Slate)

Shake your head over two handfuls of coloring books that someone, somewhere thought were a good idea. (Flavorwire)

Why libraries may be the highest caliber weapon in the fight against book piracy. (Publishers Weekly)

George RR Martin was USA Today’s Author of the Year for 2011. (USA Today)

Spielberg clues in a whole generation (or more) that doesn’t know about the world’s most famous comic book hero, Tintin. (The New York Times)

Barnes & Noble considering splitting their Nook business into its own venture in the US and abroad. (The Bookseller)

Kirkus gives a sneak peek at upcoming picture books for 2012. (Kirkus Reviews)

Here’s what’s new in audio books for January. (Publishers Weekly)

Libraries in the UK facing the cutbacks and difficulties of their US counterparts. (Public Libraries News)

Have a look at the year in the life of hawking your new book. (Kaye Publicity)

The First Book projects gives thanks to its supporters for their help in 2011. (FirstBook.org)

Harper Collins taps film director, Chris Columbus, to write a three book mid-grade series. (Publishers Weekly)

RIP Czech author and dissident, Josef Skvorecky. He was 87. (BBC)

“On this day in 1972 American poet John Berryman committed suicide at the age of fifty-seven. His 77 Dream Songs won the 1964 Pulitzer, and the writing of some 300 more over the subsequent years earned Berryman international fame, but his personal problems kept pace. These seem to stem from the severe trauma of his father’s early suicide, but whatever the cause, living became a volatile and destructive mix of compulsions…” (Today In Literature)

Christpoher Hitchens’ final essay appears in Vanity Fair. (Vanity Fair)

Dickens continues as a hot topic, especially when he’s neutered by the BBC. (The Guardian)

And speaking of Dickens, a thought on why a biography of the man was edged out for the Costa Book Award by a book on poet, Edward Thomas. (The Telegraph)

McNally Jackson posts a lists of its 2011 bestsellers, but the real eye-opener is that what they sold the most of was self-publishing set ups. (Tumblr)

The Scotsman gives a nod to a new prize-winning author who used to be a chorus girl. (The Scotsman)

Lee Child’s, Jack Reacher, is headed to a theater near you. And he’ll look a lot like Tom Cruise. (The Wall Street Journal)

“On this day in 1883 the painter-writer-mystic Kahlil Gibran was born in Lebanon. His best-known work, The Prophet, was first published in 1923; it remains at or near the top of the all-time best-seller lists in both the Arab world and the West, apparently providing the comfort and inspiration intended…” (Today In Literature)

The Bible considered as cultural touchstone for literature. (The New York Times)

JRR Tolkein’s prose wasn’t up to snuff for the Nobel committee in 1961. (The Guardian)

Sometimes a story is just a story. Sometimes it has a point. To that end, here’s an article on the value of story as platform. (Bookslut)

Get in the know - what not to say in 2012, courtesy of the banished words list. (GalleyCat)

The shortest, pointiest snippet of an article I’ve seen: 10 year old book critic, WWII era. (FuilityCloset.com)

If Amazon gets all the celebrity books, what’s New York going to do for cashflow? (The Independent)

Hyperion CEO, Ellen Archer, talks technology and a new gameplan for the publishing world. (DigitalBookWorld)

Brilliance Audio to stop selling to libraries amid ebook and electronic lending disputes. (infodocket.com)

Gaby Wood talks with poet and novelist, Patrick McGuinness. (The Telegraph)

Ayad Akhtar, author of AMERICAN DERVISH, sits down with NPR. (NPR)

Barnes & Noble looks to be selling its publishing venture, Sterling Publishing. (The Wall Street Journal)

“On this day in 1825 twenty-three-year-old Alexandre Dumas (Sr.) embarked on his self-proclaimed ‘career as a romantic’ by fighting his first duel, and having his pants fall down. Dumas’s memoirs are about as reliable as his historical-fiction, but they tell the pants story in glorious, comedy-of-errors detail. He had issued his challenge after quarreling with a soldier over billiards two days earlier…”

English is difficult. Read this, preferably out loud, and marvel at how ridiculous it is. (The Poke)

Debut authors don’t quite sweep the Costa Book Awards, but almost. (Reuters)

And speaking of the Costas, here’s how the laurels were awarded. (The Guardian)

The Millions previews the most anticipated books of 2012. (The Millions)

Undaunted by the lukewarm reception to his first collection, James Franco signs a publishing deal with Amazon. (The Los Angeles Times)

Author, Harry Freedman, isn’t worried about ebook piracy, and tells us us why $.99 price points for books is a bad idea. (The Huffington Post)

Writers share the little rituals that get them to and through their writing days. (Psychology Today)

January Magazine looks over its shoulder at 2011 and also off into the horizon for what’s on its way in publishing. (January Magazine)

RIP, Ronald Searle, cartoonist. He was 91. (The Guardian)

“On this day in 1960 Albert Camus was killed in a car crash outside Paris at the age of forty-seven. On the basis of his novel The Outsider (1942), his “philosophical prose-poem” The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), his plays, his Nobel Prize (1957), his political activism, and his Humphrey Bogart good looks, Camus was elevated to almost cult status in the middle decades of the century…” (Today In Literature)

The rift between police and the man-on-the-street media generates more news to cover. (The New York Times)

Judge declares a seven point checklist to differentiate bloggers from journalists. (Forbes)

Philippe Pozzo di Borgo’s inspiring memoir to cross the Atlantic from his native France to New York, specifically, Simon & Schuster. (GalleyCat)

Rumor has it that a new self-publishing platform will be the big reveal at Apple’s event in February. (goodreader.com)

Walter Dean Myers named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. (The New York Times)

Books as decoration? Okay, I guess. As long as you read them, too. (The Paris Review)

USA Today profiles self-pubbed to mega-success, Amanda Hocking. (USA Today)

Look for some changes at the magazine racks as some of the big glossies update their formats for 2012. (wwd.com)

Some speculation on how TWILIGHT might have read if spilled from other pens. (i09)

Hay Festival of Literature and Arts rolls into Cartagena later this month. (Columbia Reports)

One more writer lost to 2011: RIP, romance author, Penny Jordan. She was 65. (Harlequin)

“On this day in 1923 Jaroslav Hasek died, aged thirty-nine. Like Franz Kafka, his contemporary - both were born in 1883, and Kafka died at forty - Hasek lived in Prague and wrote of an absurdist nightmare, but the parallel doesn’t go much further. Hasek was poorly educated, nomadic, unemployable, a practical joker happiest in a crowd or spotlight…” (Today In Literature)

“Lost” Ibsen play may not have been misplaced as much as forged. (The Guardian)

2011 was a good year for books on Physics. (Discovery)

Harper Collins sells its Manhattan office building. (Bloomberg)

Hands up: who is surprised to hear that Christopher Paolini owns a lot of resin dragons? (The New York Times)

The Scotsman has a chat with Christie Watson, author of TINY SUNBIRDS FAR AWAY. (The Scotsman)

Spin the randomizer and get a poem from Literary Kicks collection of 2011 submissions. (LitKicks)

Gregory Maguire’s much-loved Oz series comes to a close with OUT OF OZ. (The San Fransisco Chronicle)

“On this day in 1885, Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge began serialization. This was the first novel Hardy wrote for weekly rather than monthly serialization, and his journal entry for this day expresses his worry that he had overplayed the need for a steady stream of drama… (Today In Literature)

First things very first: Happy New Year!

William and I hope 2012 casts a wide arc of health, prosperity, and interesting things to talk about over our readers.

Before we go on, though, here’s a by-no-means complete list of the writers, poets, and journalists we lost in 2011. I hope they’re busy making new ones, because our ranks took quite a hit.

Rest in Peace:

Simms Taback - writer and illustrator, 79
Richard Bessière - author, 88
Vaclav Havel - playwrite, essayist, poet 75
Christopher Hitchens - essayist, 62
George Whitman - bookstore owner, patron of writers, 98
Gilbert Adair - author, journalist, 66
Ronald Wolfe - television writer, 89
Joe Simon - comic book writer, 98
T. J. Bass - writer, 79
Russell Hoban - writer, 86
Ambika Charan Choudhury - writer, 81
Christa Wolf - writer, 82
Helen Forrester - writer, 92
Anne McCaffrey - writer, 85
Barbara Grier - writer, publisher, 78
Lana Peters - author, daughter of Joseph Stalin, 85
Bil Keane - cartoonist, 89
Hal Kanter - television writer, 92
Les Daniels - writer, 68
Mick Anglo - comic book writer and artist, 95
Alvin Schwartz - comic book writer, 94
Andy Rooney - writer, commentator, 92
Norman Corwin - radio paywright, 101
Piri Thomas - writer, 83
Mildred Savage - writer, 92
Peter Gent - football payer, author, 69
Michael Stern Hart - ebook pioneer, 64
Herbert Lomas - poet, 87
Hugh Fox - poet & writer, 79
David Croft - television writer, 89
David Zelag Goodman - screenwriter, 81
Jo Carson - writer, 64
Samuel Menashe - poet, 85
Michel Mohrt - writer, 97
Colin Harvey - writer, 50
Sherwood Schwartz - comedy writer, 94
Gil Scott-Heron - poet & singer, 62
Blaize Clement - writer, 78
Sam Denoff - television writer, 83
Robert Kroetsch - novelist & poet, 83
Josephine Hart - novelist, 69
Kathryn Tucker Windham - journalist and author, 93
Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor - writer, 96
Patrick Galvin - poet & writer, 83
Kate Swift - writer, 87
Arthur Laurents - playwright, 93
Ira Cohen - poet, 76
Paul Violi - poet, 66
John Sullivan - writer, 64
Sidney Michaels - playwright & screenwriter, 83
Madelyn Pugh Davis - comedy writer, 90
Bob Block - comedy writer, 89
Sol Saks - screenwriter, 100
Arthur Marx - writer, playwright, biographer, 89
Bill Brill - sportswriter, 89
L. J. Davis - writer, 70
Ulli Beier - writer, 88
Kevin Jarre - screenwriter, 56
Giora Leshem - poet & publisher, 71
Lanford Wilson - playwright, 73
David S. Broder - journalist, columnist, 81
H. R. F. Keating - writer, 84
Bill Blackbeard - comic strip writer & editor, 84
Dwayne McDuffie - comic and animation writer, 49
Hazel Rowley - writer, 59
Jean Lartéguy - journalist and novelist, 90
Donald S. Sanford - screen and television writer, 92
Eric Nicol - writer, 91
Nikolay Dorizo - poet, 87
F. A. Nettelbeck - poet & publisher, 60
Susana Chávez - poet & activist, 36
Tony Geiss - television writer, composer, 86
Del Reisman - television writer, 86
Christopher Trumbo - screenwriter, 70
Eva Strittmatter - writer, poet, 80
Hans Joachim Alpers - writer and editor, 67
Brian Jacques - writer, 71

But there are rising writers as well:

The LA Times profiles a few up and coming wordsmiths to watch in 2012. (The Los Angeles Times)

And across the Pond, they’re looking forward to these new pens. (The Guardian)

“On this day in 1909, Marcel Proust dipped his madeleine in tea and tumbled into the childhood memory that triggered the seven-volume, fourteen-year, Remembrance of Things Past…” (Today In Literature)

The New York Times profiles imprisoned Chinese dissident, writer, and Nobel Prize-winner, Liu Xiaobo. (The New York Times)

Research indicates that reading is a human need, not a pastime. (The Guardian)

Highbrow literary monsters? You’d better believe it. (The Sydney Morning Herald)

The never-ending edit: Nicholas Carr examines the mutability of electronic literature. (The Wall Street Journal)

Meet The Telegraph’s Novel of the Year author, Vanessa Gebbie. (The Telegraph)

We have Kirkus to thank for directing us to Julie Danielson’s truly delightful book blog, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. (Seven Impossible Things)

Newt Gingrich has decided to omit the planned chapter on climate change from his upcoming book. (CBS)

There’s an app for that? There’s probably a book, too. How-to crafting on tap today… (The Chicago Sun Times)

Patch.com makes a helpful chart to compare a few Best of 2011 book lists. (Patch.com)

“‘New Year’s Eve,’ by D. H. Lawrence, is a love poem from a collection titled, Look! We Have Come Through!, published when Lawrence was in his early thirties. The collection tells a connected ’story, or history, or confession,’ Lawrence says in his Foreword, “of a man during the crisis of manhood, when he marries and comes into himself.” Autobiographically, the ‘crisis’ was provoked by the emotional tumult of Lawrence’s recent past…” (Today In Literature)

Court rules that Ghost Rider, the character, belongs to Marvel Comics, not its author. (Reuters)

Galley Cat opens a discussion on gender’s influence on literary media coverage. (GalleyCat)

Family returns overdue library book. Yeah, it’s news. It’s a story 123 years in the making. (The Guardian)

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID author, Jeff Kinney, wins a restraining order against DIARY OF A ZOMBIE KID. (ICv2.com)

Check in with a crop of book people who shared their literary resolutions for 2011. How’d they do? (The LA Times)

George R.R. Martin posts the first chapter of his latest and highly anticipated novel, THE WINDS OF WINTER. (georgerrmartin.com)

DC Comics is hinting at a new WATCHMEN sequel film. (IGN.com)

Flavorwire continues its coverage of visual and performing art inspired by literature. (Flavorwire)

DNA India recaps its take on the literary scene in 2011. (DNAIndia.com)

“On this day in 1869, the Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock was born. Twenty-five of Leacock’s forty-odd books are in his comic mode, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and Arcadian Adventures of the Idle Rich being most well-known; the others, mostly history and politics, arise from Leacock taking Canada and his PhD in Economics seriously…” (Today In Literature)

Acedia, the noonday demon, and the ancient diagnosis for all forms of distraction has plagued writers for centuries. (The New York Times)

Think you’ve been paying attention to the book world this year? Let’s find out. (The Telegraph)

This woman was unhappy, to the point of tears, with a book she got for Christmas. (GalleyCat)

THE HUNGER GAMES finally takes the top slot on USA Today’s bestseller list. (USA Today)

10 rare books fetch nearly a quarter of a million dollars for bookseller. (MediaBistro)

Leslie McDowell looks at family dynamics in Christmas scenes in literature. (The Scotsman)

Comics by and for females look to balance the male-dominated genre. (The Guardian)

Kirkus sits down with author, Henry Alford, to talk about his book on modern manners. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author, David Guterson, tackles his own version of Oedipus Rex. (The San Fransisco Chronicle)

Comedy writer, Joe Bodelai, dies at age 63. RIP. (The Hollywood Reporter)

“On this day in 1937 Don Marquis died. He wrote a handful of plays, a dozen books, and a lot of stories and poems, but his fame came mostly from “Archy and Mehitabel,” the cockroach-cat relationship he created in vers libre for his New York Sun newspaper column. This began in 1916, Marquis having come into his office unusually early one morning to find a gigantic cockroach furiously hunt-and-pecking away: “He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine…” (Today In Literature)

Harper Collins UK tips its hat to a roughly 600% increase of downloaded books at Christmas. (The Bookseller)

And on that same track, IDC analyzes ereader sales and projections. (IDC.com)

The New York observer celebrates its first ever in-the-black year. (MediaBistro)

Fundraising has never been so naked. Behold ‘Men of the Stacks‘, a calendar of cute librarians (some of them wearing not very much at all) to benefit the It Gets Better Project. (January Magazine)

How libraries can help in these tough economic times. (The Twin Cities Daily Planet)

GalleyCat’s Year in Review adds a look back at the Big Stories, month-by-month. (GalleyCat)

The Guardian posts their picks for 2011’s Best Short Stories. (The Guardian)

And here’s a bit more on the upcoming TRACK CHANGES: A LITERARY HISTORY OF WORD PROCESSING, by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum. (The New York Times)

The Telegraph Book Club closes up shop and reflects on the project. (The Telegraph)

“On this day in 1917, H. L. Mencken’s “A Neglected Anniversary,” his hoax article on the American invention of the bathtub, was published in the New York Evening Mail. Mencken’s lifelong campaign to deride and derail Main Street America — the “booboisie” — had a number of easy victories, but this joke succeeded beyond his wildest dreams and in Swiftian proportions…” (Today In Literature)

In Ethiopia, Swedish journalists, Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye, are sentenced to 11 years in prison for serving as “accomplices to terrorism”. (CNN)

A long, busy life of hard work steered Jim Henry away from learning to read and write. Now, at age 98, he’s an author. (USA Today)

Don’t you know who I am? Have a look at the history of anonymity in literature. (The Los Angeles Times)

Actor, Simon Callow, reflects on his love for Dickens. (The Telegraph)

Arlen Specter’s upcoming memoir will be of interest to students of American politics. (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Have a think on how the word processor has changed writers and writing. (The Verge)

Four authors look back on their favorite books of 2011. (The National)

Fiction, prescience, and running for President: Newt Gingrich and his writing partner, Bill Forstchen. (The Boston Herald)

Stanley Fish has a look at (and a sigh over) what’s become of formal literature studies. (The New York Times)

“On this day in 1904 Dublin’s Abbey Theatre opened, premiering W. B. Yeats’s ‘On Baile’s Strand’ and Lady Gregory’s ‘Spreading the News.’ Growing out of the general Irish literary renaissance of the time, the Abbey quickly rose to international fame for both the quality of its productions and the controversies which often surrounded them…” (Today In Literature)

Happy Birthday to The King James Bible. It’s 400 years old and still going strong-ish. (The Austin Herald)

Poetry and medicine in tandem is on tap at The Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants. (JAAPA.com)

Author, Chen Xi, jailed in China for subversion. (The New York Times)

The San Fransisco Chronicle gets its Best Of list in under the wire.  (SFGate)

The New York Times weighs in on Harper Collins’ ebook library lending policies. (The New York Times)

A New York Ronald McDonald House benefits from a large book donation. (The Saratogian)

Children’s authors share their year’s favorites. (The Topeka Capital-Journal)

Kids’ books apps are ranked over at Kirkus. (Kirkus Reviews)

“On this day in 1936, Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women opened on Broadway, the first of its record-breaking 657 performances. Some reviewers (usually male) were more appalled than enthralled with the eye-scratching gossip of ‘best-bred hellcats and social filth mongers’ all dressed up in ‘ermined smut,’ but the play brought first-fame to Luce…” (Today In Literature)