News Bits, In Brief

Reading In Bed, a British survey of frequent book buyers, found that 85% of those asked read in bed every night, "with only 8% citing the enigmatic 'something else' as their favourite activity in bed." Please, people, the next time you're asked, LIE! Tell them that you and your significant other read as foreplay, or as part of the afterglow, or better yet, claim that you're only reading books about the 'enigmatic something else.' We're trying to nix the negative nerd stereotypes and make bookstore employees the new socialite supermodels and/or literate lotharios.

The BBC has launched a web page where you can hear poets read from their own work, and it's not emo kids reading MySpace odes to themselves, either. They've got Ogden Nash, W. H. Auden and Sylvia Plath among others.
Update: Apparently, Sylvia Plath has a MySpace page. For some strange reason, though, I suspect a hoax. For one thing, isn't she dead? And another, wouldn't the real Plath use more sad-faced emoticons?

Hemingway's home is overrun with six-toed cats, and the city of Key West thinks it's purr-fect! Seeing as how Bob Barker has retired from The Price Is Right, maybe he oughta take his 'have your pets spayed and neutered' shtick on the road -- to Florida, for starters.