National Public Radio is running the commentary of Barbara Feinman-Todd on the public’s strange acceptance of ghost writing.

The Guardian has a story about a librarian who stole rare books from Manchester Central library and put them up for auction on the Web. The scum got off with a suspended sentence and a bit of community service. Would that have happened had he been stealing automobiles? The man, Norman Buckley, may his name live in infamy, made over $20,000 before his arrest and had at least $285,000 worth of stolen texts in reserve.

Stephen King is getting some surprising praise, such as that below from a review in today’s Washington Post, for his new novel Lisey’s Story.

. . .King has crashed the exclusive party of literary fiction, and he’ll be no easier to ignore than Carrie at the prom. His new novel is an audacious meditation on the creative process and a remarkable intersection of the different strains of his talent: the sensitivity of his autobiographical essays, the insight of his critical commentary, the suspense of his short stories and the psychological terror of his novels.

The New York Times is running a piece on Senator George Allen’s (R-VA) sleazy attacks on challenger Jim Webb’s novels.

Even after years of teaching and tutoring, it still amazes me that college students so often need basic writing advice. Students do not want to write and do not understand why they need to be able to write well.

The “Thinking” section of Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing begins by addressing student attitudes toward writing:

Why do students write? Easy, most students would say: Because we have to. Honest, perhaps, but discouraging. It makes writing seem pretty trivial. How about another go? Here’s a likely second answer: To show what we know. Hmm, I’m not sure I like that much better. Isn’t there something more positive we can say about writing?

Newspapers across the country are eliminating or reducing their book coverage, claims a Publishers Weekly article. The main reason cited is that devoting column inches to books does not bring a monetary reward.

Speaking of the fictional town of Sea-Clift, Richard Ford told The New York Times:

The copy editors gave me a hard time about the hyphen. They argued that very few place names in America are hyphenated. But I said that this was a town invented by land developers, and they would definitely want the hyphen.

The article covers The Lay of the Land, Ford’s latest novel and the continuation of sportswriter turned real estate agent Frank Bascombe’s tale.

When a student showed Alice McDermott a discarded library copy of Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider, stamped “Low Demand,” McDermott felt like she’d been punched in the stomach.

Listen to her defense at National Public Radio.

At last month’s National Book Festival, Bob Woodward found himself in a fix.

“Even though [State of Denial] was being sold in stores, even though the whole embargo was broken, he was legally bound not to speak about his own book,” says Book World’s editor, Marie Arana, who had the unenviable task of breaking the news to the crowd. “It was the apex of the ridiculous extreme that an embargo can go to.”

The Guardian’s article on the value of prize-giving opens with a provocative broadside:

The culture of prize-giving has gone mad. It has replaced the art of criticism in determining cultural value and shaping public taste.

Slate has a short article on businesses that refuse to accept cash. The mind boggles.

Recommended with reservations.

At The Guardian, Elif Shafak has written about what Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel means for Turkey.

As a Turkish woman writer, I too have often felt out of tune with the baba tradition. While the son-society keeps discussing the implications of this award, I am filled with delight, pride and optimism. Pamuk’s Nobel is not only a great honour for him and for the richness of Turkish literature, but also a sign of the great contribution Turkey can make to world culture if and when it reaches out beyond national borders and nationalist debates.

The Washington Post has a review by Martin Kettle of Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.

The New York Times is running a roundup of “recently reviewed books of particular interest.”

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition has a segment on how Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel win is viewed in his native country.

Slate has an article on authors’ sometimes absurd efforts at cultivating mindshare, with a focus on Hemingway’s exploits and ad copy.

Canadian writers have won a class-action lawsuit. The primary issue was whether a publisher (The Globe and Mail, in this case) can reuse a writer’s printed work in electronic form without permission or compensation.

David Pogue at The New York Times reviews the Sony Reader. He lists a number of the negative aspects of the device, such as:

Like an Etch A Sketch, the Reader’s screen has to wipe away each page before drawing the next one. Unfortunately, the result is a one-second white-black-white blink that quickly becomes annoying.

Despite pointing out many such ridiculous, unacceptable flaws, the reviewer takes a puzzlingly positive slant.

The “winners” of the Quill Awards have been announced. Oh, dear. Just look at their Book of the Year.

Orhan Pamuk, another Turkish author tried for “insulting Turkishness,” has won the 2006 Nobel prize for literature. His work includes Snow, My Name Is Red, and Istanbul: Memories and the City.

Kiran Desai has won the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. She is the youngest female winner of the award. She was interviewed by Rediff in January.

Recommended with reservations.

Texas grossly inflates its high school graduation numbers, masking critical dropout figures, according to studies to be presented Friday at a Rice University conference.

Academicians from institutions including Rice, Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins, as well as other experts in the field, say their goal is to bring clarity to the problem, explain the implications for the state and nation and lay the groundwork for progress.

Read the rest of the article at The Dallas Morning News.

Ever Vienna’s poor stepsister and now overshadowed by its more beautiful cousin, Prague, Budapest, perhaps more than any other of the central European cities still emerging from the cold storage of the Soviet era, is still waiting for its future to arrive.

“I hope that someday people won’t have to leave here to succeed,” Ms. Marton said.

Ms. Martin is Kati Martin, speaking in a New York Times article about The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World.

A post (”Addendum”) at Poppy Z. Brite’s blog describes the frustration that those who read sometimes feel with those who do not.

The Marxists Internet Archive has seen substantial updates recently and is well worth visiting. Every time I reread Capital, I am amazed anew at its clarity and accuracy in describing the system.

The print edition of The Washington Post is carrying a scan (p. A14) of a short hand-written letter that disgraced Representative Mark Foley (R-FL) sent to a former page. What struck me, rather than the creepy tone of the note, was the preponderance of errors. Have we really set the bar this low?

60 Minutes has an interview with Bob Woodward about his new book, State of Denial, which charges the Bush administration with conducting a domestic program of deception.

A Powell’s Books blog update seems to agree with my assessment of the Sony Reader, citing an Associated Press review of the device.

Today’s Washington Post carries a review by Ron Charles of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Apparently the novel “follows two of the last people on Earth, an unnamed man and his young son, as they walk through an incinerated wasteland foraging for food and hiding from gangs of starving cannibals.” If you have a friend or relative who knits sweaters and socks with kittens on them and foists these items off as gifts, then you clearly need to hop on Amazon right now and return the favor by sending her a copy of The Road.