Book News, In Brief

Cuz folks love answering simplistic questions, Entertainment Weekly asks, Which books made you cry?


Britain has awarded the role of poet laureate to Carol Ann Duffy. Duffy is not only England's first female poet laureate, she's their first lesbian poet laureate as well!


This is totally last week's news, but since Inkwell Michelle is a huge SF fan (Full disclosure: She's also my bo$$), here's a link to almost every Science Fiction book cover created for Penguin Books.


More art, this time a collection of colophons. What are colophons, you ask? The little, iconic emblems used by publishers to identify their imprint. (Think: The Penguin penguin, the Bantam rooster, the Eerie ghost.)


Nothing succeeds like success illness. USA Today reports, "The swine flu outbreak has boosted sales for an acclaimed history of the 1918 pandemic, and helped biologist Nathan Wolfe get a six-figure deal for a book about viruses."


When I first read that author Peter Leeson had proposed to his girlfriend via the dedication page of his new book, I couldn't help but smile. Then I saw that Leeson is an economist, and I thought, 'Stingy bastard's just trying to get out of paying for an expensive dinner.' I admit, this economy has brought my cynicism to a new low.