PW is looking at the “enhanced” ebook as a “different kind of reading“… I thought that was when you switched from reading grammatically sound text to Dan Brown. Turns out it’s not. In other news:

Kobo—dragging down the mothership at Indigo despite increased sales of plastic shit and yoga matts?

In other e-reader news: at least Kobo is still going—Plastic Logic has scrapped its reader

Also, Waterstones has slashed the price on its Sony pocket reader

I can’t put it into words… Terms other languages have that English doesn’t

Will Dostoevsky stations in Moscow tube cause rampaging violence? Ah, Fyodor—the new Grand Theft Auto

The new trend in romance novels? The Amish. Srsly. I shit you not. I couldn’t make this garbage up

What should president Obama read this summer?

The futurama of English?

Is Stephen King warming to that deformed louse from Satan’s nutsack Glenn Beck? Say it ain’t so, Stevie…!

Twilight to get white covers this Christmas, likely to coincide with Playtex marketing campaign

What’s George Plimpton’s kid up to these days? Stuff.

Pop-up books: making kids more delighted than smart for half a century

Aaaand another one of those hey-kids-books-are-okay articles

Someone’s always picking on Houellebecq… this time it’s… Houellebecq

You know when you go over to someone’s house and either judge them, or judge yourself, by their shelves? That’s going to disappear, unless you can pocket their reader and get it into the bathroom.

Remember when you could tell a lot about a guy by what cassette tapes—Journey or the Smiths?—littered the floor of his used station wagon? No more, because now the music of our lives is stored on MP3 players and iPhones. Our important papers live on hard drives or in the computing cloud, and DVDs are becoming obsolete, as we stream movies on demand. One by one, the meaningful artifacts that we used to scatter about our apartments and cars, disclosing our habits to any visitor, are vanishing from sight.

Nowhere is this problem more apparent, and more serious, than in the imperilment of the Public Book—the book that people identify us by because they can glimpse it on our bookshelves, or on a coffee table, or in our hands. As the Kindle and Nook march on, people’s reading choices will increasingly be hidden from view. We’ll go into people’s houses or squeeze next to them on the subway, and we’ll no longer be able to know them, or judge them, or love them, or reject them, based on the books they carry.

Q: So, what’s to be done with all the left over paper? A: Stuff.

Two PsOV on the Booker: it’s not a barometer of what’s good in fiction; it’s a barometer of what’s good in fiction. I’m glad to see Lisa Moore in there, regardless. Great novel, February.

Nobody who has been to one of this country’s numerous book festivals – whether at Hay in May, or Dartington earlier this month – could possibly be persuaded that the novel is dead. And if Siegel’s profound gloom about the state of fiction might hold a little in the US, where the greats are dying off and the new generation, as put forward by The New Yorker in its 20 novelists under-40 list, has yet to prove itself, this week’s Booker longlist stands counter to that claim over here. Martin Amis might have failed to establish himself as the English Saul Bellow, but there are plenty of exciting younger writers ready to fill his shoes.

Meh.

The ebook battle is getting more aggressive, NASTIER, and even cheaper still… that’s how I likes em, cheap and nas-TAY

Ebooks banned at coffee shops… Um…?

Big pb publisher switches to POD… Dong… Dong… Donnnnnnnggggg….

Hear HeatherHeatherHeather… c’mere girl! Atta girl! Who’s a snoogie-woogums? Goood gurrrrl!Now: fetch!

How many books would you say there are? In my house? Several thousand. In the world? Only Google knows…

But are they right?

Class action suit against Apple claim that iPad reads “like a book” based on fact that books don’t overheat and automatically shut down… You haven’t read my new one, then. It’ll burn you. Tssst!

Press expands in France… to fill 10-yo niche … ah, kids… the only ones bored enough with digital to think paper is cool

Chicklit strikes back, presumably with business end of fuzzy pink stiletto

Today in “Death of…”: the price tag on textbooks… oh, and travel guides

Shakespeare-stealing loser who fancies himself a Robin Hood gets eight years in the Nottingham dungeon… something tells me there’s no band of merry men waiting to spring him

Novella finds new popularity in world sick to death of pages and pages of, you know, text

Mormon bible goes for $1.5m… Mormons themselves on the otherhand tend to go for much less

New Jersey takes final, post-Jersey Shore step towards total ruin

The future is now

HuffPo’s a playah-hatah… 15 most “overrated” authors… given the number of poets in here, something just screams that failed-poet-gets-gig-at-major-venue vibe

Lucky family saved by Superman

Adorable lesbian, Justin Bieber, corrects his publisher: it’s a photo book, not a memoir… Tiamat settles back into Yellow Alert status

Whoa: VQR editors kills self

Delillo descends to earth to talk with Robert McCrum, enormous “meh” manifests in North Atlantic Ocean centred near Newfoundland

Famous last words: literary exits

Brilliant, expensive marketing: plant paid readers around town

Why have Brits stopped writing about sex? I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: sock garters. Where do you go with that?

I’m going to take the week off, my shadowy minions. I’m sorry. You’ll survive. Hopefully you’ll get up to some ass-kicking on your own. Remember all that I’ve taught you and you’ll do fine. Come back and see if I’m here next week. Until then, watch this video of a man throwing a brick into a washing machine on full spin cycle. It’s an apt visual metaphor.