News Bits, In Brief

Vintage Classics has just launched 'Vintage Twins.' The concept is a simple variation on the if-liked-that-you'll-love-this bookseller routine. Two books (one old, one recent) covering (arguably) similar themes are shrink wrapped together for retail sale. Here are a few examples: Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith with Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Haruki Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle next to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Michel Houellebecq's Atomised with Gulliver's Travels, and Martin Amis's The Rachel Papers with Henry Fielding's Tom Jones.
Do any of you have any suggestions?

The headline reads, Man Writes a Book using his Nokia! The fact that neither the author or the book are named leads me to believe that I'd be better off buying the phone.

Hunter S. Thompson's widow is releasing a book this week. According to the press release, 'the book's mission is to introduce the world to the Hunter Thompson she lived and worked with and knew, rather than the drug-crazed persona he revealed in his writing.'
My only problem with this? The book is a scant 81 pages long. If that's all there is to contradict the thousands of pages of autobiographical gonzo-writing that Thompson produced...well, maybe he really was the drug-crazed persona he revealed in his writing.