Book News, In Brief

Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr has a gripe about almost every kids' lit film adaptation to come out of Hollywood in the past hundred years, so why does he hold out hope for this year's releases?


In an effort to make you feel better about your cluttered book collections, author and film critic Roger Ebert has come clean about his mess of a home library. Hell, he's even gone so far as to post YouTube clips of other people's pulp piles.


Arianna Huffington has announced her first pick for 'Arianna's Reading' (a.k.a. the HuffPost Book Club, a.k.a. the You'll-never-see-Sarah-Palin's-memoir-mentioned-here Book Club). It's In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore.


Rocket Bomber puts up so many great, bookstore-centric blog posts that it's hard to choose just one or two a week to link to. Today's pick is perfect for those folks about to open a bookstore, as well as those of you considering moving their shop to a new location: 88 Lines about 44 Retail Considerations.


'Whitopia' is a mystical, magical place for White folks, a planned community populated with conservative Caucasians who share identical ideologies regarding race, religion and Right Wing politics. Searching for Whitopia author (and Black dude) Rich Benjamin explored these ethnically-cleansed enclaves, and NPR has an interview with him.


Sweden is atwitter with rumors about this year's Nobel Literature Prize. Using the criteria of 'Well, it's been a long time since they gave a Nobel Prize to anyone who is ___' (and that's precisely the criteria the odds-makers are using), smart money says it will be awarded to a poet. After all, a poet hasn't won in thirteen years. But what kind of poet? Some say a Spanish language poet, as none have won in nearly two decades. But then there's the Rhymus Vaginus Americanus -- the female, American poet. She apparently stands the best chance of winning, as none have ever won!