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But I’ve never said I wouldn’t link to/write about Laura Albert. She (and her alter ego, JT Leroy) is, after all, my O.J. Caught the New York Times’ latest (“Her Journey, All True,” by Alan Feuer) first on Galleycat, who calls Feuer Albert’s “enabler.” Honestly, her life feels like a reality show that I need to [...]

I did say I wouldn’t write about O.J. any more. But I plan to continue writing about lying. How to resolve this? He’s got a point.

In the Telegraph, A. N. Wilson (Betjeman, 2006) wonders whether the end of smoking means the end of literature (“Is this the end of English literature?“): This attack on basic liberty, which was allowed through without any significant protest, might mark the end not merely of smoking, but of literature. Heroic Beryl Bainbridge keeps on [...]

Could this be the year that the Literary Establishment tries to understand Bestselling Authors? First, USA Today (OK, not highbrow, but bear with me) documents the book-writing machine that is James Patterson ™. Next, the Guardian profiles Jodi Picoult, calling her “one of those authors of whom literary editors have never heard, and readers can’t get enough.” Then, [...]

Maybe it’s the Rowling factor, but “More Britons dream about becoming an author than any other job,” reports a new survey reported in the Guardian (“Writing tops poll of ideal jobs,” by Michelle Pauli). I’d love to see whether the Stateside stats are similar. Of course, as a sometime struggling author myself, I have to [...]

There are a lot of great things about working for Booklist. One of them is that I work down the hall from the Office for Intellectual Freedom. How cool is that? Not to rub it in, but I’ll bet you don’t have an Office for Intellectual Freedom at your workplace. They have lots of good [...]

Alert readers will spot a theme to today’s posts. In this one, self-published author (and director of Provincetown, MA’s tourism office) Bill Schneider learns a hard truth about lying: if you must lie, don’t make it a lie that anyone can fact-check with a quick visit to Oprah.com. From the Weekly Dig (“It’s Story Time,” by Thomas [...]

J. K. Rowling is not writing a crime novel. This isn’t a hoax, or even a prank, but simply a joke retold out of context. The culprit? Ian Rankin, sort of. From the Guardian (“Rowling’s ‘crime novel’ is a red herring,” by Richard Lea): Speculation that the Edinburgh book festival may have resolved one of the burning questions [...]

From the Washington Post (“Poe Fan Takes Credit for Grave Legend,” by Wiley Hall): BALTIMORE — The legend was almost too good to be true. For decades, a mysterious figure dressed in black, his features cloaked by a wide-brimmed hat and scarf, crept into a churchyard to lay three roses and a bottle of cognac at [...]

Well, I’m back. I never thought I’d find myself desperate to get back to the clean air of Chicago, but it’s a fact: much of Western Montana is on fire. The air was so smoky that, half the time, we couldn’t see the mountains. Sometimes we couldn’t even see the sun. I stood on my [...]