I was invited by Riky Stock of the German Book Office to give a presentation to GBO directors from around the world about publishing post-financial collapse. Which is a pretty big topic, and one that will probably dominate conversations post-holiday season, especially if the retail sector struggles as much as people are predicting.

At Three Percent, Chad W. Post serializes his talk.

The National Book Foundation announces the winners of the 2008 National Book Awards. Mark Doty is the recipient of the award in poetry, and Peter Matthiessen is the recipient of the award in fiction.

In Bookforum Keith Gessen examines books on Edward Said (The Legacy of Edward W. Said) and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (The Soul and Barbed Wire).

At Slate Ron Rosenbaum sounds the new-media warning bell.

If this reads like an apostasy, it also looks like part of a larger withering of faith. Detroit is having a cataclysmic year while bus and train riderships exceed capacities, the once unsurpassed American road network is in vast disrepair and in countries from Japan to England, fewer people are undergoing the adolescent ritual of getting a driver’s license.

In the New York Times, Tom Vanderbilt reviews Brian Ladd’s Autophobia.

Michael Dirda of the Washington Post reviews The World Is What It Is, Patrick French’s biography of V. S. Naipaul.

. . .according to French and such one-time friends as Paul Theroux, the young Vidia really could be humorous and charming, and he seems to have been the indulged pet of the English literary and social establishment. On his travels, surprisingly, Naipaul also shows a rare ability to win the confidence and help of other people — not that he is a person one could ever actually trust.

In the Guardian, Richard Lea reports the winners of France’s Goncourt and Renaudot prizes.