Lucas Wittman talks to author Belle Boggs as part of the Book Beast’s ‘Best New Writers’ series. (The Daily Beast)

Might Scarlett Johansson be ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’? (NY Daily News)

Australian best selling author and Booker longlister Christos Tsiolkas lashes out at European fiction, calling it “cheap” and “shit”. (Telegraph)

Dan Zak (writing as Tawny Tipples) examines the flimsy industry of the not-so-anonymous pen name. (The Washington Post)

Carol Rumes tackles Longfellow’s translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy in her latest “poem of the week”. (Guardian Books Blog)

Jan O’Hara chats it up with Absolute Write owner MacAllister Stone. (Writer Unboxed)

Yu Jie’s controversial book about Chinese premier Wen Jiabo hits the shelves in Hong Kong. (BBC)

Jill A. Tardiff rounds up the details of the book industry’s 2010 trade shows. (Publishers Weekly)

Rumors abound regarding Sony’s next eReader move. (Gadget Venue)

R.I.P. Narayan Surve, Marathi poet. (DNA India)

“On this day in 1762, Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds departed on their six-week trip to Devonshire, an excursion now rich in Johnsonia. It was made possible by the impoverished and very Tory Johnson having received a government pension from the ruling Whigs, to great outcry and this retort: “I wish my pension were twice as large that they might make twice as much noise.”" (Today in Literature)

Danuta Kean profiles former historian and current Romantic Novel of the Year nominee Rachel Hore. (The Independent)

Daniel Beekman ponders the fate of the writings of Chaim Grade. (New York Daily News)

William Skidelsky looks at the career of Jonathan Franzen and where he goes from here after his TIME cover story and the success of his new book. (The Observer)

Ian Rankin now baffled at the purple prose of his early novels. (Telegraph)

Lonnae O’Neal Parker profiles The Help author, Kathryn Stockett. (The Washington Post)

UC Berkeley tries out the rent-a-book concept. (San Jose Mercury News)

Hilary Mantel joins the “summer short story special” with “Comma.” (The Guardian)

Mark Sanderson returns with another installment of ‘Literary Life.’ (Telegraph)

“On this day in 1947, India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain. Salman Rushdie got the title for his 1981 Booker Prize-winner, Midnight’s Children from the speech Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru gave in the first minutes of the new day: “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. . . .”" (Today in Literature)

Aimee Zaring chats it up with award-winning author Neela Vaswani. (The Rumpus)

Check out an abridged version of Lev Grossman’s cover story on Jonathan Franzen… (TIME)

…and Franzen’s “take on five novels that inspired him recently.” (TIME)

Paranormal romance writers to hit the road on the Smart Chicks Kick It Tour. (Publishers Weekly)

Tom Jacobs examines the capacity of pop-up books to serve as learning tools. (Miller-McCune)

Author Lev Raphael seeks to apply the dramatic professional exit of Steven Slater to the life of a writer. (Huffington Post)

Olivia Cole talks to friends of the late Patricia Neal about the late actresses’ marriage to Roald Dahl. (The Daily Beast)

Maryann Yin reports on Alikewise, a “dating site for bookworms.” (GalleyCat)

R.I.P. Tahar Wattar, Algerian novelist. (NYTimes)

“On this day in 1834, nineteen-year-old Richard Dana boarded the merchant brig, Pilgrim for the Boston-California return voyage that would become Two Years Before the Mast. His 1840 book, written with a desire to tell in “a voice from the forecastle” of the ordinary seaman’s life, was an immediate international hit.” (Today in Literature)

This Friday’s issue of TIME will feature a living novelist, Jonathan Franzen, on the cover for the first time in a decade. (NYTimes)

Sona Avakian chats it up with Allison Hoover Bartlett. (The Rumpus)

Fairmont Hotels will begin offering Kobo eReaders to their VIP guests. (Electronista)

Jacob Lambert imagines what a 4th grade book report on Portnoy’s Complaint might look like. (The Millions)

Jason Boog reports on rapper Jay-Z’s memoir deal with Random House imprint, Spiegel & Grau. (GalleyCat)

Philip Stone examines the windfall in sales of being on the Booker longlist. (theBookseller.com)

Kara Cutruzzula rounds up 20 of the best (and worst) celebrity book dedications. (The Daily Beast)

If you are what you eat, what was Mark Twain? (Courant.com)

Alison Flood reports on the collaboration of descendants of Tolkien and Dickens. (The Guardian)

Alison (busy one, ain’t she?) also takes time to flip the conversation about overrated writers and ask readers about their favorite underrated writers. (Guardian Books Blog)

Alan Bisbort talks about his cottage industry of Knowledge Cards. (LitKicks)

“On this day in 1827 William Blake died at the age of sixty-nine. Blake’s last years passed more or less as his others: in such poverty and obscurity that his burial in Bunhill Fields was largely unnoticed and on borrowed money — nineteen shillings for an unmarked grave, the body nine feet down, stacked on top of three others, and eventually followed by four more.” (Today in Literature)

French writer Michel Houellebecq “turns his poison pen on himself.” (The Independent)

Check out an extract from Donald Sturrock’s upcoming biography, Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl. (Telegraph)

Bestselling novelist Pat Conroy will announce the National Book Award finalists at the childhood home of Flannery O’Connor on October 13. (Jacket Copy)

Plastic Logic’s QUE eReader dies before ever hitting the market. (theBookseller.com)

Martha Woodruff shares her self-publishing success story. (NPR)

Eat, Pray, Love reaches news heights (lows?) of commercialization. (Home Shopping Network)

Alison Flood digs a little deeper into Anis Shivani’s “overrated writers” list. (Guardian Books Blog)

Gary Dexter explains how the Dr. Seuss classic Green Eggs and Ham got its title. (Telegraph)

Guess what holds the top two spots on the Amazon Kindle store’s Top 100 Free list? Video games… (GalleyCat)

“On this day in 1937, expatriate Edith Wharton died in France, in the quiet, Old World style she liked to live and describe; also on this day in 1937, and in New World contrast, ex-expatriate Ernest Hemingway bared his hairy chest to Max Eastman’s unhairy one, demanded “What do you mean accusing me of impotence?” and then wrestled Eastman to the floor.” (Today in Literature)

Alison Flood revels in the the “undiluted, unpretentious fun” of the works of Jilly Cooper. (Guardian Books Blog)

A survey of failed celebrity political campaigns, including more than a few writers (they missed a real opportunity in Hunter Thompson’s run for Aspen sheriff). (TIME)

Pat Conroy wants to know what all this hubbub over eBooks is about. (ABCNews)

John McMurtrie surveys a healthy selection of Northern California bookstore cats. (San Francisco Chronicle)

M.A. Orthofer previews this fall’s Frankfurt Book Fair. (The Literary Saloon)

After fifty-four agents pass on his unpublished novel, James King wins the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and finally gets his publishing deal. (The Daily Dish)

Emily Stokes profiles Lydia Davis over lunch. (Financial Times)

Pamela Paul defends the right of adults to read young adult literature. (NYTimes)

R.I.P. Matthew Simmons, author and proponent of “Peak Oil” theory. (MarketWatch)

“On this day in 1637, Edward King, college friend of John Milton, was drowned at sea; three months later, Milton published his commemorative poem, “Lycidas.” This is one of the major contributions to the elegiac tradition, giving not only inspiration to Shelley (”Adonais”) and Tennyson (”In Memoriam”) but a title to Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel.” (Today in Literature)

From the ChildrensBookPress YouTube description:

Author René Colato Laínez discusses his latest book, FROM NORTH TO SOUTH / DEL NORTE AL SUR (Children’s Book Press, Sept 2010).

Susie Mesure discovers what Marilyn Monroe’s writings tell us about her literary tastes. (The Independent)

Taylor Antrim explores why the time may be right for the return of the novella. (The Daily Beast)

Rohan Preston recaps the 2010 National Poetry Slam. (Star Tribune)

Great news for those enamored with the idea of an ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ pilgrimage: the travel industry will take your money. (Chicago Tribune)

Mark Brown examines how Google went about counting every book in the world. (Wired)

Craig Morgan Teicher takes a closer look at four enhanced eBooks. (Publishers Weekly)

MacAllister Stone has the details for this week’s WriteOnCon event.

Carol Rumens is back with a new poem of the week: “The Sorrow of Love” by WB Yeats. (Guardian Books Blog)

R.I.P. Jerry Flint, journalist. (Wall Street Journal)

“On this day in 1922 Philip Larkin was born. Larkin’s mordant tone and accessible verse became so popular in mid-twentieth-century Britain that he was offered the Poet Laureateship-a position which he characteristically declined. Over the next decade, after his Collected Poems, his Selected Letters and a biography by Andrew Motion (then himself Poet Laureate) appeared, some found “the sewer under the national monument Larkin became.”" (Today in Literature)

Still Life: A short film about Tony Judt:

Historian Tony Judt dead at the age of 62. (NYTimes)

“My solution has been to scroll through my life, my thoughts, my fantasies, my memories, mis-memories, and the like until I have chanced upon events, people, or narratives that I can employ to divert my mind from the body in which it is encased.” (The New York Review of Books)

In other news:

Robert McCrum spends a morning with Don Delillo. (The Observer)

Terry Teachout muses on the political evolution of David Mamet. (Commentary)

Matteo Pericoli kicks off a new series of drawings of the views from the windows of writers with Orhan Pamuk’s Turkish vista. (The Guardian)

Paul A. Cantor’s review of Michael Slater’s new biography of Dickens reveals a treasure trove of details about the novelist. (The Claremont Institute)

Osama Kamal explores Cairo’s “house of poetry.” (Al-Ahram)

“On this day in 1965, Shirley Jackson died of heart failure, at the age of forty-eight. For twenty years and from various angles Jackson had built a reputation for quietly ripping the lid off life in Pleasantville; by the end, a tangle of physical and mental ailments made her feel unable to venture out into her own town of Bennington, Vermont.” (Today in Literature)

From the NovelsAliveTV description:

NovelsAlive.TV’s Dayna Linton was fortunate enough to catch up with Joseph Finder at Thriller Fest in New York City. Joe talked about his novel, High Crimes, going from being optioned for film to viewing the finished product:

Lindesay Irvine presents an excellent profile of Howard Jacobson. (Guardian Books Blog)

New Jersey’s poorest city on the verge of closing all three branches of its public library. (My Fox New York)

British beat poet keeping the tradition alive. (BBC)

Susan Banikarim and Xorje Olivares document the personal comeback story of Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert. (ABCNews)

Anis Shivani goes after ‘The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers.’ (The Huffington Post)

James Lovegrove takes a look at some foreign sci-fi in the cleverly-titled “Alien nations”… (Financial Times)

…M.A. Orthofer offers some commentary. (The Literary Saloon)

Gloria Riviera talks to the late Stieg Larsson’s partner and follows up on the rumors of a fourth book in his incredibly successful series. (ABCNews)

Mass paperback publisher Dorchester Publishing, Inc goes digital and print-on-demand only. (Wall Street Journal)

Steve Almond is back with some more “wretched verse” in Bad Poetry Corner #19. (The Rumpus)

“On this day in 1934, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling allowing James Joyce’s Ulysses into America. This enabled Random House to issue the first U.S. edition, over a decade after Sylvia Beach’s original Paris edition; according to Random House editor Bennett Cerf, the case hinged entirely and hilariously upon one of these smuggled Beach editions.” (Today in Literature)

James Baldwin’s newly collected essays bring back the full force of his power as a writer, thinker and social critic. (Newsweek)

How Stieg Larsson turned Quercus into a heavyweight publisher. (The Independent)

Anne Rice tells Mitch Landsberg all about her religious awakening (or whatever this is supposed to be…). (LATimes)

James Forrester tries to find out of the genre “historical fiction” even means anything anymore. (Guardian Books Blog)

Rob Walker looks for “creative new uses” for books, since people, you know, won’t be reading them anymore and all… (NYTimes)

…and then there’s these guys. (Galleycat)

Google tries to count every book in the world. (Christian Science Monitor)

Richard Price to write a series of detective novels under the pen name, Jay Morris. (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind)

Jill Priluck looks at how digital publishing has “leveled the playing field for small publishers.” (Slate)

Vince Flynn signs a two-book deal to team up with U.S. Army lieutenant colonel Brian Haig for a series about anti-terror operation. (Publishers Weekly)

“On this day in 1786, twenty-seven-year-old Robert Burns served the last of three public penances for “ante-nuptial fornication” with his eventual wife, Jean Armour. The “fornication police,” as Burns called them, allowed the poet to stand in his usual pew, rather than make him sit on the penitential stool — or, again in Burns parlance, “the Creepie Chair.”" (Today in Literature)

John McEntee offers a fascinating glimpse into the near-reclusive autumn years of The Ginger Man author, JP Donleavy. (The Independent)

Michelle Gorman takes her turn in the “chick lit” debate, suggesting the label be embraced. (Guardian Books Blog)

Midmorning offers up some audio coverage of this week’s National Poetry Slam in St. Paul. (Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ)

In celebration of yesterday’s rebuke of Prop 8, Carolyn Kellogg rolls out 20 classic works of gay literature. (Jacket Copy)

Random House CEO speaks out on the eBook age and his conviction that “the printed book will still dominate for a long time.” (Der Spiegel)

Joe Matazzoni reports on the final tally from NPR’s poll on the best thriller novels of all time. (NPR)

Morgan Von Ancken looks for the literature in Nas’s masterpiece, “Illmatic”. (Lit Drift)

R.I.P. Tom Mankiewicz, screenwriter. (NYTimes)

R.I.P. Bobby Hebb, songwriter. (LATimes)

“On this day in 1884 the cornerstone was laid for the Statue of Liberty. Among the thousands who helped Joseph Pulitzer raise the money for construction were Whitman and Twain — each donated manuscripts for auction — but Emma Lazarus’s poem, “The New Colossus,” raised more than these literary giants. Decades later, Sylvia Plath would join the giant-killing with her “Colossus.”" (Today in Literature)

Yu Jie to publish a book critical of China’s premier, Wen Jiabao. (AP)

DJ Connell explains her aversion to the label “chick lit.” (Guardian Books Blog)

New York author Joseph Yannai is apparently a walking freak show. (NY Daily News)

The National Endowment for the Arts has slashed its Big Reads budget by 73%. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Sean Penn in talks to play renowned literary editor Max Perkins. (Hollywood Reporter)

Is this the end of Thuglit? (GalleyCat)

Peter Stothard rounds up a new selection of quality reads from Britain. (The Daily Beast)

Is Barnes & Noble for sale? (Business Wire)

HarperCollins jumps into the enhanced eBook market. (Publishers Weekly)

Isia Jasiewicz examines the legitimization of self-publishing. (Newsweek)

“On this day in 1749 Samuel Richardson fired another volley in his feud with Henry Fielding, in this instance the opinion that Fielding’s popular hit, The History of Tom Jones, could only have been written by one “too prescribing, too impetuous, too immoral, I will venture to say, to take any other Byass than that a perverse and crooked Nature has given him; or Evil Habits, at least, have confirm’d in him.”" (Today in Literature)

The Rumpus Book Club chats it up with author Doug Dorst. (The Rumpus)

Guess who has 70-80% of the eBook market. Go on… guess. (CNET)

All this talk about the death of books doesn’t seem to be stopping the opening of new brick and mortar bookstores. (Wall Street Journal)

Author Neil Gaiman prevails in suit over Spawn characters. (AP)

Michael Bhaskar reports on why publishers believe 25% is a fair eBook royalty.  (BookBrunch)

Canadian novelist and poet Steven Heighton traces the inspiration for his latest book. (The National Post)

M.A. Orthofer reports on some touchiness in Myanmar over biographies of Kim Jong Il. (The Literary Saloon)

Hamilton Nolan offers up a quick guide to figuring out whether or not you’re a plagiarist. (Gawker)

Anna Barker examines the viability of ‘reading rehabilitation’ in the U.K. (The Guardian)

R.I.P. Kevin Morrissey, managing editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. (cvillenews.com)

R.I.P. John Callahan, cartoonist. (GalleyCat)

“On this day in 1920 P.D. James was born. Her 1999 “fragment of autobiography” is entitled Time to Be in Earnest, from Samuel Johnson’s statement that “At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.” The memoir is a one-year diary beginning with her seventy-seventh birthday and ending with the assurance that “I shall continue to write detective stories as long as I can write well….” True to her word, her next novel, at age eighty-one, had reviewers declaring that she had “transcended the crime genre.”" (Today in Literature)

Alyssa McDonald profiles Ruth Rendell at 80. (The Australian)

PW releases its annual salary survey. (Publishers Weekly)

Boyd Tonkin says this year’s batch of beach reads boasts real literary merit. (The Independent)

Place your bets for the 2010 Booker Prize. (The Millions)

Ben Fountain remembers poet Robert Trammell. (Dallas Morning News)

Filmmaker Shane Salerno shares a never-before-seen photograph of J.D. Salinger, circa 1968. (Newsweek)

16 year-old singer Justin Bieber has struck a deal with HarperCollins to publish his memoirs. (USAToday)

Carol Rumens is back with a new poem of the week: “Schubertiad” by Fiona Sampson. (Guardian Books Blog)

On this day in 1740 James Thomson’s masque, Alfred the Great was first produced, in an open-air performance before the Prince and Princess of Wales. Amid the lessons on Alfred’s greatness and the prophetic visions of future glory were seven songs; one of them, “Rule, Britannia!,” was immediately popular, and is still the unofficial national anthem. (Today in Literature)

Richard Russo comes to terms with his home town. (The Independent)

Apropos of nothing (or very little): hungrybeast digs up the poetry of Wikileaks co-founder, Julian Assange. (Hungry Beast)

Madeline Marr chats it up with the “queen of chick lit,” Jennifer Weiner. (The Miami Herald)

Geoff Nicholson draws the parallels between the rules of drinking and the rules of writing. (NYTimes)

The Hindu kicks off The Hindu Best Fiction Award — for works in English only… (The Hindu)

…M.A. Orthofer is not amused. (The Literary Saloon)

Fay Weldon shares her thoughts on Copenhagen and New Zealand. (Daily Mail)

Mark Sanderson returns with a new batch of literary news. (Telegraph)

William Skidelsky explores the resurgence of experimental literature. (The Observer)

“On this day in 1915 Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” was first published in the Atlantic Monthly. This was just as Frost had returned to America from England, to farm and become famous: “There is room for only one person at the top of the steeple,” he would say, “and I always meant that person to be me.” Later misfortunes would make him feel punished and sorry for his choice.” (Today in Literature)

Tim Martin reports on his exclusive access to the JG Ballard archive. (Telegraph)

Can David Markson’s library be put back together again. (Jacket Copy)

Pocket Books launches online community for romance and urban fantasy readers. (Publishers Weekly)

Who will blink first in the eReader price war? (PCWorld)

Rachel Harvey offers an update on the Alan Shadrake trial in Singapore. (BBC)

Booktrust launches a new literary award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, starting in 2011. (Booktrust)

The 15 biggest bestsellers… evah. (Huffington Post)

Angela Wang marvels at Emily Dickinson’s green thumb. (The Epoch Times)

“On this day in 1485, William Caxton printed Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur. England’s first printer was more than a printer: in his preface to The Order of Chivalry, a practical book on knight-errantry to go with Malory’s Romance, Caxton complains that the knights of his day are altogether too un-Arthurian, spending far too much time at brothels, dice and “taking ease.”" (Today in Literature)

Anne Rice quits Christianity. (GalleyCat)

Boyd Tonkin rounds up some modern classics that are favorites of contemporary authors. (The Independent)

John Freeman credits American writers with the “you can’t go home again” genre before rescinding it. (Guardian Books Blog)

Benyamin Cohen talks to author Michael Largo about the strangest religious practices he’s documented. (The Daily Beast)

Jeff Rivera chats it up with literary agent Gwendolyn Heasley. (GalleyCat)

Vit Wagner profiles UK historian and novelist Alison Weir. (Toronto Star)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid #5 going for the gusto with a print run of five million copies. (Publishers Weekly)

Lawyers for JK Rowling move to have plagiarism charges dismissed. (theBookseller.com)

New Sarah Palin book cover revealed. (CNN)

Huge Winston Churchill archive, consisting of a million documents, to go online. (The Independent)

“On this day in 1818, Emily Bronte was born in Thornton, Yorkshire. Most accounts portray Emily as the brightest, most intense, and most difficult of the three sisters — “not a person of demonstrative character,” wrote Charlotte, “nor one, on the recesses of whose mind and feelings, even those nearest and dearest to her could, without impunity, intrude unlicensed.”" (Today in Literature)