Book News, In Brief

Just in time for the day after Valentine's Day (my bad, I should've posted it earlier), Sexual Fables examines Why Jane Austen Never Married. I know that this is the sort of thing that fascinates those of you with Anglophile chick lit predilections, but think about it. If Austen had tied herself down with a 19th century marriage, do you really think that she would have written so many books? Y'all should be celebrating the fact that marriage missed Ms. Austen, not nit-picking the particulars as to why.
(Thanks to Bookslut for the heads-up.)

Magician/comics scribe Grant Morrison sits down with Newsarama to discuss his plans for DC Comics' current Comic Book Event of the Year, Final Crisis. Normally these over-hyped crossovers have zero appeal to me, but this one sounds different. I mean, did 52 have Sonny Sumo, Anthro the Caveboy, "some seriously badass super-animals," and a guy called the Human Flame? ("He’s this really goofy character we found in an old Martian Manhunter story. He’s this dumb supervillain who just sits around with his cell phone taking pictures of all the other villains and driving them crazy. But he’s got a really big role to play. The name was just so great, 'the Human Flame,' in a story about evil coming to Earth…and snuffing out 'the Human Flame.'”) Answer: nope.

From TechNewsWorld.com:
Borders, the second-largest book retailer in the U.S., on Wednesday, announced it is opening the first of 14 new concept stores that it will launch this year as part of a restructuring plan it revealed in 2007. Central to the new store format is a "Digital Center" that will enable customers to download books, burn CDs, self-publish their own books and research their family background.
Wow! The future is now! It's like The Jetsons meet the Flintstones! It's...it's...wholly unnecessary. Who besides your tech-ignorant grandparents is going to want to drive all the way to their local Borders to do what they could just as easily have done from their own home?