Book News, In Brief(if a picture is worth a thousand words, consider this post three thousand words short)

Fans of Y: The Last Man and/or the heart warming antics of poop slinging monkey sidekicks will get a kick out of this news bit, via a Hyperion press release: Hyperion have pre-empted North American rights to KASEY TO THE RESCUE: How a Capuchin Monkey Saved a Family in Despair by Ellen Rogers. Hyperion President Ellen Archer announced the deal saying: "This remarkable story of a mother's love for her son and the irresistible monkey who transforms their lives will leave readers laughing through their tears. It is one of those rare books that celebrates what it means to be a family in both the best and the worst of times." Read that last part again. Whoever wrote that is either a sarcastic genius or a hyperbolic idiot. It's a thin line, innit?

Via The AP: Chick lit is on the rise in Nigeria's Muslim north, with predictably divided results. On the one hand, the female fans say that the books "help them navigate contemporary life and their titles are proliferating rapidly, pitting younger women against a predominantly male, conservative elite," while the fellas feel they're "pulp fiction that degrades Islamic and indigenous cultural mores." Paging Nora Ephron, Matthew McConaughey and that girl from Almost Famous: this sounds like a wacky rom-com in the making.

Reason #4356842 why I think Americans mostly suck, via Yahoo News: People in Argentina, Mexico, Egypt and China are more likely than those in the United States to say it is very important for the news media to be free from government control, a survey published on Thursday found. The survey of 20 countries by World Public Opinion.org at the University of Maryland, found strong support worldwide for a free press and opposition to government restrictions on access to the Internet. But in the United States, where residents believed the news media already had significant freedoms, many people did not support further protections for the press, the survey showed.