Author, Will Self, weathers a harrowing moment as his house falls apart while his family’s inside. (London Even Standard)

Newsflash: authors aren’t as interesting as the stories they make up. (The Atlantic)

…and sometimes the stories they make up are too long. (The Daily Beast)

But still, meeting your favorite author can be a good story in itself. (The Huffington Post)

Book Expo America launches in a week and a half. Get ready. (publishingtrends.com)

A slow economy makes liberals write books. (The Washington Post)

How to run a railroad, er, bookstore, according to (Inside Higher Ed)

Josie Leavitt mourns the stacks of printed publisher catalogs she used to get. (Publishers Weekly)

Neil Barofsky coordinated TARP, the bank bailout. Now he’s gonna tell us all about it in a book. (Associated Press)

Illustrations infuse classics with new life. (The National)

How Literary Festivals have become tools of social change in Asia. (twocircles.net)

Author, Henry Denker, dies at age 99. RIP. (The New York Times)

“On this day in 1910, Margaret Wise Brown was born. Included in the over one hundred children’s books she published — even more came out after her early death — are The Runaway Bunny (1942) and Goodnight Moon (1947). Brown’s writing philosophy developed through her association with Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s ‘here-and-now’ approach to children’s literature…” (Today In Literature)

- Saul Bellow

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Tyrone Beason declares Peter Carey’s The Chemistry of Tears a “profoundly detailed study of love and grief.” (Seattle Times)

Patrick Anderson is intrigued by Qiu Xiaolong’s Don’t Cry, Tai Lake for its “political edge, but endearing innocence.” (Washington Post)

Michael Berry calls John Irving’s In One Person a puzzling, not-quite-one-thing, not-quite-the-other literary enterprise.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

The Orange Prize will no longer be Orange after the mobile phone company pulls out of the book biz after seventeen years. (The Bookseller)

There’s grumbling amongst the professors over opening up Oxford’s Bodleian Library. (The Telegraph)

Researchers suggest that YA books have a rating system for content. (GalleyCat)

Hit ‘em where it hurts? School’s arts budget slashed after receiving a $15,000 fine over soda in the bookstore. (The Consumerist)

The Guardian weighs books reviews - Amazon vs. newspaper. (The Guardian)

Houghton Mifflin all set to file for bankruptcy. (Publishers Weekly)

U.S. publishers enjoy a 333% increase in foreign books sales, thanks to ebooks. (Digital Book World)

New York Yiddish bookstore finds a new home. (The New York Times)

“On this day in 1967 Langston Hughes died, aged sixty-five. Hughes was one of the most influential and respected of Black American voices in the middle decades of the century, writing prolifically in many genres, and almost exclusively on one theme. In a 1926 essay entitled ‘The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,’ Hughes announced that theme this way: We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad…” (Today In Literature)

James Patterson gifts $80,000 to his alma mater, Manhattan College. (New York Daily News)

Literary censorship still plagues Tunisia. (Tunisia Live)

Alan Hollinghurst talks books and the Booker with (The Guardian)

The artwork of Charles Bukowski at (BookTryst)

Here are 10 Great Books About Cycling, courtesy of (The Christian Science Monitor)

Quill & Quire recaps the Atlantic Book Awards. (Quill & Quire)

Esquire Magazine is set to publish an ebook of short stories for men. (No pink covers allowed, apparently.) (The New York Times)

Scottish author, Doug Johnstone, scales up the Amazon charts. (The Scotsman)

More than four years after Randy Pausch gave The Last Lecture, his widow, Jai Pausch, pens a memoir and talks with (USA Today)

“On this day in 1688 Alexander Pope was born in London, the only child of middle-aged, Catholic parents. This was the year of the Glorious Revolution, and the broom that swept out Catholic James II and swept in Constitutional reform also brought new restrictions and suspicions upon English Catholics. Barred from politics, and from attending university in pursuit of such careers as law and medicine — barred even from living within ten miles of London — Pope began as an outsider and seemed destined to remain so…” (Today In Literature)

Charles Baxter takes the REA Award for the Short Story. (reaaward.org)

When one author has an affair with another author’s wife, the public gets two novels out of it. (The New York Daily News)

The Carnegie Medal finalists are announced. (carnegie.org)

… while the American Library Association makes way a new award for adult fiction. (St. Louis Today)

Is Harry Potter good enough for literature studies? (The Telegraph)

Two California newspapers debut a dedicated children’s book review section. (Publishers Weekly)

Twitter bookclubs are explained at (The New York Times)

Harlan Ellison re-releases some of his early, pulpier work. (GalleyCat)

Library Journal features 26 graphic novels relevant to June, LGBT Pride Month. (Library Journal)

Mexico City’s Benjamin Franklin Library turns 70. (state.gov)

Carlos Fuentes is lauded and remembered by the literary community and the world in a state funeral. (The Telegraph)

“On this day in 1593 Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council issued a warrant for the arrest of Christopher Marlowe on charges of spreading ‘blasphemous and damnable opinions.’ Five days earlier Marlowe’s roommate and fellow playwright, Thomas Kyd, had also been arrested on similar charges; under torture (apparently a set piece on the rack called ’scraping the conscience’), Kyd had claimed that the offending documents in his possession were in fact Marlowe’s…” (Today In Literature)

- Hermann Hesse

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Mary Pols calls Sadie Jones’ The Uninvited Guests “a sublimely clever book about generosity, discovered late, yet just in time.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

Robin Harding slices and dices Paul Krugman’s End this Depression Now! (Financial Times)

Beth Jones declares Sátántangó by László Krasznahorkai “a Hungarian masterpiece about the nature of storytelling.” (The Telegraph)

The Atlantic profiles the work of Pulitzer-winner, Marilynne Robinson. (The Atlantic)

Publishers Weekly goes back in time to fix their 1998 list of the 100 best novels. (Publishers Weekly)

Paris as a literary focal point is the topic today at (The Guardian)

Agent, Rachelle Gardner, scores a hit with her blogpost 7 Bad Habits of Successful Authors. (rachellegardner.com)

Journalist, Adam Piore, says that, despite the trials of magazines and print media, it’s still an exciting time for nonfiction narratives. (The Huffington Post)

Will Ellsworth-Jones recounts the research hunt for the street artist, Banksy. (The Telegraph)

Salon explores the social potential of the suggestibility of readers. (Salon)

Whatever the may think of 50 SHADES OF GRAY, these prominent literary groups don’t hold with censorship. (GalleyCat)

Children’s author, Jean Craighead George, dies at age 92. RIP. (School Library Journal)

“On this day in 1873 Dorothy Richardson was born. Pilgrimage, Richardson’s life-long experimental novel, began appearing in 1915, at about the time Joyce and Proust were engaged in similar experiments. While Richardson may or may not be’ the genius they forgot’ (the subtitle of one biography), her writing was the first to be described as ’stream of consciousness,’…” (Today In Literature)