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This morning I saw a graffito on the mailbox by my bus stop that read: ENDER. Must be an Orson Scott Card fan, I said to myself. Then I got on the bus. Across from me, a woman was reading Ender’s Shadow. I probably stared at her too long, but I still couldn’t tell if [...]

Lemn Sissay, a judge for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Fiction, informs us that, in the UK at least, some books get longlisted not because of quality but contractual obligation. From the Guardian Blog: I’ve just finished judging the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Fiction, which had me reading 45 books in three months. When [...]

Undaunted by the folding of the Sobol Award, Simon & Schuster will be a partner in another new venture, the First Chapters Writing Competition. Announced today (by an “exceptionally excited” Tom Gerace) on Gather.com, a social networking site, the award offers a contract with Simon & Schuster imprint Touchstone, promotion and distribution by Borders, and $5,000 in cash [...]

I just posted the Top of the List winners to the home page of Booklist Online. I’d hoped to do it even sooner, but we’re still scooping the January 1 & 15 2007 Booklist, which is just going in the mail. As I noted earlier today in the Book Club, deciding how to cast my [...]

From the Associated Press, via the International Herald Tribune: Controversial new Sobol Award canceled due to lack of interest NEW YORK: The Sobol Award, a controversial new literary contest that offered agentless writers a $100,000 (€76,888) first prize and a contract with Simon & Schuster for the top three winners, has been canceled. The Sobol [...]

What do William Styron, Truman Capote, McGeorge Bundy, Germaine Greer, Gore Vidal, and Michiko Kakutani have in common? They’re on Norman Mailer’s All-Time Enemies List. Best repartee: after Mailer head-butted him in the green room of The Dick Cavett Show in 1971, Vidal–still lying on the floor–said, “Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.” Does Mailer’s [...]

If your New Year’s resolutions include a plan to be more charitable in 2007, consider the Kigali Public Library: In 1994, Rwanda experienced a genocide in which approximately one million Rwandans were killed. Through the establishment of the Kigali Public Library, Rwanda’s first public library, it is our hope that the tools used for destruction [...]

When I reviewed Ken Bruen’s The Guards way back in 2002–it was the first book of his that I’d read–I wrote that the protagonist, Jack Taylor, was “a bit self-congratulatorily, well, Irish.” (I wasn’t sure at the time whether “congratulatorily” was an actual word, but it made it past the copyeditor, so I’m sticking with it now.) [...]

Mostly I read, but sometimes I do a little writing, too. From the Chicago Reader Fiction Issue: The Courage of My Companions By Keir Graff December 29, 2006 MY NAME LOBSANG Sherpa. I am Sherpa. Carry big load up mountain. Climb Sagarmatha, mountain you call Everest, seven time. My English not so good. OK to [...]

From Galleycat: Last Sunday, Judy Stoffman of the Toronto Star updates a story we first heard back in June, with more information about Alice Munro‘s announcement that she’s all done now. And Stoffman thinks she might actually mean it this time when she says “she has used up all her material and has nothing left [...]