Petelit points to some back-story on my three-year-old son’s favourite bedtime book, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. We bought the book at Ninja K’s (she of large brood) insistence and have subsequently bought most of the others author Virginia Lee Burton was famous for. Now, here’s an old dame who saw the concept of rapid obsolescence coming down the pipe. Baby Ninja can virtually recite the books. Like Pete’s daughter, he’s heavily into Katy and the Big Snow right now, but Mike Mulligan has been a standout favourite over the last year.

As should we all. Oh, wait, this isn’t about deliciously funny pastries. It’s about that specific cartoon.

Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.

Um, not that I’m supporting these (and other) idiot editors trying to squeeze legs and sales out of this story by pissing on the faces of millions worldwide, but how does the following explanation make a lick of sense?

“We absolutely respect our customers’ right to choose what they wish to read and buy and we support the First Amendment,” Bingham said. “And we absolutely support the rights of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoons. We’ve just chosen not to carry this particular issue in our stores.”

If that came out of the government’s mouthpiece, we’d cry doublespeak.

Ever have trouble sleeping at night because you’re not up on the latest trends in Chinese literature. Well, have I got a sleep aide for you! It’s actually just a list. CNN to the rescue with “Slow News Day, Part 763541″ (aka, “No One White Was Kidnapped Today Day”)

Left Behind, that snuff porno for born again Xtians and written by a Right Ass, is being made into a video game. What other titles might fair well?

Ottakar’s will be taken over by HMV/Waterstones. Mmm… culturkillatastic!

Stephen Leacock Medal finalists announced. Woooh! Heh heh heh. That’s a good one. Just lemme wipe these tears away. Heee heee.

Irish writer, dead at 71.

Design geeks and artists, unto me! I have good news! Your kind has won. Now, please, go wash up. You look like you’ve been cleaning chimneys.

Sex columnist Dan Savage has been imploring clueless readers over the years to DTMFA (dump the motherfucker already) when people just don’t know how to do what was best for them. Thus, from telling people how to avoid getting screwed over, it was only a short hop into politics with ITMFA, impeach the motherfucker already. I’ll take one of the little black numbers with white lettering. It’ll match my new Ninja T. Maybe if I put the two of them in the wash together they’ll have bastard love children that feature Bush with a shuriken in his head.

Insight into the mind of Ben Franklin is the hopeful outcome. Franklin historians follow a lead on shelf marks in order to amass a list of the 4,276 books in his library.

The volumes were listed by “Case” and “Number,” leading Mr. Wolf to conclude that the shelf mark referred to the location of the books on Franklin’s shelves at home. The C stood for case and indicated on which shelf the book belonged, while the N stood for number, referring to the position of the book on the shelf.
By the time he died in 1991, Mr. Wolf had deduced about 3,000 titles contained in about 1,000 volumes, or about a quarter of Franklin’s library. He also had identified the names of about 700 books Franklin had mentioned owning in his letters, though actual copies have not been located yet.

Now that information, along with some additional research, is being codified by researcher Kevin Hayes in a 900-page bibliography of 3,741 titles comprising about 2,000 volumes. Included in the catalog are works such as a 1764 edition of “Two Treatises of Government,” by John Locke; a 1721 edition of “Opticks: Or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light,” by Isaac Newton; and a 1556 edition in Latin of the Magna Carta, one of the world’s most important political documents.

Imagine spending the bulk of your life hunting down the titles of someone else’s library. It’s the most gorgeously geeky thing I’ve ever heard of.

New Quebec textbook put out by The Council for Quebec Sovereignty aims to teach sovereignty to the wee children.

The book contains 40 exercises tailored to everyone from preschoolers to university grads. The exercises, however, might raise eyebrows in academic circles. For example, Activity No. 1 is aimed at kindergarteners. They are asked to make decorations for Quebec’s national holiday on June 24, and the book’s illustration is a child’s drawing of a Quebec flag on a pole with the Canadian flag beneath it, ripped in half.

Here’s what the council says about it:

Gérald Larose, a former labour leader and head of the sovereignty council, repeatedly denied the book is propaganda.

“It’s a work tool for teachers,” he told reporters at the book’s launch. But he said schools are inundated with federalist propaganda, including material celebrating the National Library, the Canadian census and the Year of the Veteran.

What do you think?

Profiled in eye magazine. Bravo to eye for putting a poet on the cover.

Bookslut points to the New York Press’s list of the 50 most loathesome New Yorkers. Some writers are included. A couple of surprises along with James Frey. I quite like Safran Foer. He was a nice guy.  Many of the others in the list are New Yorker insiders, and I can attest that the list is pretty good. Especially that awaful Andrea Peyser.

The most powerful woman in British publishing is apparently Amanda Ross. Profiled here.

Police arrested 32 Detroit high school students over protests that ran amok (I mean there were eggs thrown). Apparently, the school forces the poor children to wear uniforms and won’t let them take home books.

Lamart Williams, 16, a sophomore, said the protest went well until the arrests started. He said he hoped that the attention from the protest would lead to changes at the school.
“It’s no books to take home … the school is dirty,” he said.

I think the school needs to look into this.

Or bought book of the year, depending on how you look at popular votes. Children and dress-up nerds have so much time to vote.

More artists total in Toronto, but a higher concentration in Vancouver where they store them in Matrix-like post-natal facilities.

The Washington Post runs an infrequent ‘forgotten authors’ column. This one’s about a Canadian Jew that everyone’s completely neglected. But don’t worry Mordecai Richler is not really Jewish Canadian, he’s Jewish American, because, like, North America; get it?

What we forget, though, is that “American” literature means — or certainly should mean — something far more expansive. The entire Western Hemisphere is American, and a more generous view than those who inhabit this country are inclined to take would include far more under the rubric of “American” than we now permit. Among other things, such a view would enable us to acknowledge that one of the most important, interesting and accomplished “Jewish American” writers of the late 20th century was a Canadian.

Sheesh. A more generous view? Maybe we should open up the border entirely, eh? Amalgamate governments. Oh, I know. Bush can be Harper’s VP. And then it would be just like Narnia at the very beginning. Always winter and never Christmas.

Shakespeare first folio on the auction block.

A first folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, described by auction house Sotheby’s as “the most important book in English literature”, is to go on sale this summer with an estimated price tag of £3.5m.

A sexy little purchase for the scholar in your life.

A law professor in the States has banned laptops in her lectures, citing a “picket fence” between her and her students’ brains. She’d rather they write notes by hand and think critically than transcribe everything she says. Imagine that. The students are protesting, as lawyers are wont to do, but for naught. (From Moleskinerie)

National Poetry Month at the wealthy Poetry Foundation is pretty cool. Podcasts! Now I just have to get a pod-thingy! I think they’re called iPods, but from where I sit they look like uPods. Or everyonebutmePods.

The National Poetry Month podcasts include an audio biography of renowned African-American poet June Jordan, recordings by actors Alfred Molina and Paul Giamatti, Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor interviewing poets Billy Collins and Kay Ryan, profiles of poets Linda Bierds and Samuel Menashe, poetry in translation—audio selections from the April 2006 issue of Poetry magazine, and recordings by award-winning  ontemporary poets Jane Hirshfield, Tom Sleigh, Marilyn Nelson, and Donald Hall.

Sir VS Naipaul is on a literary rampage (again), diparaging the writing of pretty well everyone we’ve always been told is good.

Naipaul said Thomas Hardy was “an unbearable writer” who “doesn’t know how to compose a paragraph”. And Ernest Hemingway “was so busy being an American” he “didn’t know where he was”, he told the Literary Review. The Trinidad-born UK writer, who was knighted in 1990, said his own writings had been neglected in his home country. “England has not appreciated or acknowledged the work I have done,” he said.

And so he’s taking his ball and going home. So there. Okay, he’s not going anywhere but he’s pouting publicly once again and again. I love it.

Does being a writer numb you to literature? Citing a chance encounter with three otherwise serviceable stories from respected writers in a respected litmag, the editor of Slushpile ponders why the work left him cold. Was it mediocre work, or was he merely not in the mood, numbed from overindulgence?

As writers, we read a great deal (or, at least we should) and most of the time, we’re not just reading for pleasure. We’re examining, deconstructing, and analyzing. We’re trying to figure out what works and what editors want. It’s not unusual for me to read three books and several magazines in one week. There are times when I become so numb to literature that I worry even Cormac McCarthy or William Faulkner would be incapable of penetrating my shell. Usually when this happens, I slow down my reading, try to change up my sources, and hope that I encounter a new, exciting work to cure the malaise.

This happened to me years ago with theatre. After spending several years involved in acting and stagecraft, I found myself unable to watch any production with a suspension of disbelief. I could see the blocking choices, the lighting design, the proscenium. I could practically hear the stage manager working the cue mic. I’ve never really enjoyed a production since. Maybe the oddly fantastic work.

This now also happens from time to time with poetry. I find myself hard-pressed when coming to a book as a reviewer to view it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t read a dozen books a week. Slushpile asks how we, as craftspeople, remain fresh and open to the work around us.

A Scrabble tournament held in the Dakota Sioux language (which is apparently scheduled to die in 2025… ??) is being held to encourage wider fluency.

Speaking of nom de plumes, Iraqi blogger, ‘Riverbend’ is up for the £30,000 prize. Let’s just hope this pseudonym isn’t covering up the writings of some empathetic combat soldier. Uhm. That’s a joke, in case any of you aren’t sure.

Baghdad Burning, by a 26-year-old author who has won an international readership under the pen name Riverbend, is longlisted for the £30,000 Samuel Johnson award. In the list, announced today, she is up against 18 other books including Alan Bennett’s latest bestseller, histories of the cold war and the great wall of China, and a biography of the 19th-century cookbook author Mrs Beeton. The Guardian carried an extract from Riverbend’s title last summer.

The shortlist for the prize follows the article.

Author of The Haunting and The Changeover, Mahy, at 70, is not about to let this award go to her head.

Mahy biographer and member of the literature foundation which nominated the writer for the award Tessa Duder said Mahy’s win was the biggest for any New Zealand author.

“Bone People (Hume’s Booker-winning novel) was for a single book written in English.

“This (The Hans Christian Andersen Award) is for a life-time of achievement and a lasting contribution to world literature with winners chosen from 69 countries,” she said.

VS Naipaul gets all up ins.

Naipaul said Thomas Hardy was “an unbearable writer” who “doesn’t know how to compose a paragraph”.

And Ernest Hemingway “was so busy being an American” he “didn’t know where he was”, he told the Literary Review.

I myself would go after Joyce, if only for that mustache.

John Skinner, the man who toured people around Ian Rankin’s character Rebus’s Edinburgh, has died.

Writing on his official website, Rankin hailed the man who turned his dream into reality with “great success”. He said: “I didn’t meet John until late on in his life. I told him he was crazy to think that people would want to walk around John Rebus’s Edinburgh… and I was wrong.

Rankin led tributes to the man; if you’ve booked in a tour, do not be distressed, please. Skinner’s mate, Colin Brown continues the tradition.

Here’s a roundup of what’s happening in lit awards.

• Canada gets a new children’s book prize
• Former GG on Giller jury
• Kiriyama winners
• Now that’s what I call a good win!

For your Da Vinci update… No word yet from the courts, but just as anticipation builds, the paperback comes out and publisher-in-the-middle Random makes the most of things by releasing, ON THE SAME DAY, plaintif Baigent’s new book The Jesus Papers.

Madrid’s Las Letras neighbourhood, the home of all things literary, is being taken over by trendy folk. The gentry being gentrified, as it were.

Welcome to the decade, print media.

By Ima Krapkow Assrod. Not really, but…

My friend was adamant. “I have an ego as big as a house and so do you!” he said. “There is no way I could write so much as a postcard without having my own name on it. But a book?” He was dumbfounded; most people are just puzzled.

My nom de plume will be Agnes McLeod, the ageing Canadian writer of the lives of small town folk. My first book will be called, “Wearing Flannel in the Limited Genepool” and will rock the way Canada thinks about towns like Bradford and Keswick, ON. Or not rock, as the case may likely be.

In bumpfing my plot to forgive library transgressors, Maud points to a piece on Joe Orton. Apparently he spent time in the crowbar motel for defacing books. That is so hot. What are you in for? Murder 1. You? Defacing books, baby. Das, right… Back the fuck up.

So remember, we’re hearing confessions in the comments. Click here.

You know, sometimes I think The Onion carefully doles out one lit story per issue, just to meet the niche market.

I’m tremendously sorry about your split with your husband. At the same time, I must confess, had your situation been presented to me as a piece of short fiction, I would have found it hackneyed and forgettable.

You must feel sad and uncertain, much like I felt when I was mapping out the primary conflict in my novel. It’s scary, this blank page that you fill with the future. And the primary conflict—or game plan, as I call it—is the toughest part of writing, which is why most contemporary writers ignore it. But you’ve got to have a plan. It’s like if you’re building a skyscraper, your primary conflict is your blueprint. It’s everything. Don’t you agree?

Best of all, this one comes with a built in Soft Skull Press plug.

“I wanted to capture the sense of adventure, lust, and peril that these characters would feel, along with their utter lack of social context or emotional complexity.“

Testes vs disease. Hey Moe! Com’ere! I wanna cure Cancer! Woop woop woop!

German scientists say cells from the testes of mice can behave like embryonic stem cells. If the same holds true in humans, it could provide a controversy-free source of versatile cells for use in treating disease.

And by “controversy-free” they don’t mean, you know, on the scale of someone coming at your boys with a scapel and collection dish, but in the GRANDER scheme…

Here’s a rundown of the major Stanislaw Lem obits. I’m really crushed by this. Michael at the Saloon has a good point. Please give us more, and better, translations to honour him.

• NYT
• Guardian 
• LAT
• Times
• Washington Post
• BBC
• CBC

The Globe picked up an AP piece, so I won’t bother linking. Their site makes them more and more irrelevent every day, anyway.

Lynn Coady’s Mean Boy belongs to a tradition of academic satire

One of the easiest and most fertile targets in these novels is the pomposity of academe. Profs in many of these books have an inflated regard for their achievements, oblivious to the fact that their scholarly prestige holds little meaning in the wider world.

Worse still are the creative writing profs. I have to get this book, though I suspect it will be particularly painful to read.

Besides attractive people? A bunch of stuff.

A Manchester City football programme from 1905, a Led Zeppelin CD and 17 Rolling Stones albums, including Hot Rocks and Beggars Banquet, are among 28 items confirmed as stolen from the collection in the last five years.

While the thefts represent a tiny fraction of the 150m items in the library’s possession, the stolen items are valued at £100,000, with a number of rare maps and illustrated plates ripped from antique books by international thieves. A single plate cut from a 1522 volume on Pompeii is worth £45,000.

I can’t remember if I’ve made this confession before, but once, when I was very young, I tore a map from the back of a Tolkein hardcover housed in the school library. It still haunts me to this day.

A PG primer from the Guardian.

Anne Michael’s Fugitive Pieces is being adapted to film on a $10M budget. I don’t know how they expect to pay for all the ILM CGI around the climactic battle sequence between the Torgon Homeworld and the ragtag band of Last Earthlings, but I’m sure they’ll pull something off. And given that Keanu has waved his usual eight figures to star opposite Jessica Simpson, things are looking bright for the spunky little novel that could. (Thanks, J)

I expect my stick’s stuck. Rabbit, my stick’s stuck. Piglet, is your stick stuck? The stakes and tensions run high in the 23rd annual World Poohsticks Championships. Ah, Poohsticks, the game of kings and gentlemen.

Hong Kong is making a grab for the international literary spotlight. (Would somebody please slap the web designer at the IHT? That or cut his fingers off, whichever stops the design madness.)

One of the greatest spec writers of all time, dead at 84. His official site.

Last night, in celebration of Nowruz, the Persian new year, Ariel Balevi told a love story from the great Iranian epic, Shahnameh at a fantastic Persian restaurant named Pomegranate Chai (food that makes you want to cry it is so good — Go. Now. 420 College St.). While strictly speaking The Toronto Festival of Storytelling does not kick off until next week, it felt like it started last night.

A schedule for this illustrious festival can be found here. I will be presenting The Nettle Spinner at the book party as part of the launch for the festival at the Toronto Reference Library on Friday March 31. A comprehensive list of authors presenting their work does not seem to be available, I’m afraid, but the best reason to come is that the evening is a tribute to the Jamaican storytelling icon, Louise ‘Miss Lou’ Bennett.

Could Montreal’s Blue Met festival have missed the point when putting together its “Black and White” discussion panel? Black Ink comments:

Donna Bailey Nurse is expected to be at the festival and she’ll be hosting the panel Black and White. Now this is supposed to be a panel of black writers talking about the experience of writing in a white world, but I wish the organizers at Blue Metropolis would stop with the title and the whole theme itself. Firstly, this isn’t a “white world.” Secondly, as one black novelist stated on the panel last year, why is it that no one asks “what it’s like for Jews to write in a Gentile world?” Thirdly, Nurse has just published an anthology on black Canadian writing. The book has 29 contributors from which to choose. You’d think this would be the perfect time to assemble a panel of black Canadian writers and give them a platform to discuss the state of black writing and publishing in Canada. Why the hell didn’t they put together a panel of black writers to discuss blogging or urban literature in North America?

French publishers are drowning under slush. (From Goodreports)

Twelve reasons for the death of the small/independent bookstore.

4. Writers–who sell their souls to be published, write what is already being written or choose the new for its own sake, opt to feed the demands of editors rather than do their own best work, place style over substance, and bear no standards–for boring their readers unto television.

(From Backwards City)

I can’t resist linking to reviews of my heroes. Especially when they act as much as introduction as review.