Day two, new digs

Ooh, this moveable type stuff is rather fun–so nice and clean, certainly. To wit:

There’s this Hay-on-Wye festival happening. It’s really big over in Britain, especially since they completely take over this little town (population: 1300) and expand it to 80K-plus. Anyway, the Guardian has a whole section devoted to it, but I can’t take my eyes off the cartoons various writers are submitting as their “having a good time/wish you were here” substitute. Cute–kinda….

Lev Grossman (he of CODEX fame, the novel that was supposed to be the big runaway success that THE RULE OF FOUR actually is) rounds up some choice crime fiction, including new books by Henning Mankell, Boris Akunin, and Michelle de Kretser, for Time Magazine.

And speaking of THE RULE OF FOUR, the Brits want in on some bestseller action, and duly report about the book’s success in the US.

Evidently, the Sunday edition of the Boston Globe was all mystery, all the time. I linked to a couple of pieces already but managed to miss Hallie Ephron (who’s taken over from Jim Fusilli as one of the paper’s regular mystery reviewers) and her roundup of new books, as well as Ed Siegel’s rather perfunctory examination of how mystery protagonists Have Lives and Act Like People.

Ah, the wonders of the ‘Net–hearing about Haruki Murakami’s completion of a new novel through a Russian newsfeed site. He’s also a big fan of Dostoyevsky, apparently.

One has to go far and wide to find some book reviews, and Mo Hayder’s TOKYO is no exception, getting treatment in the New Zealand Herald. I do wonder if she’ll be getting any kind of US deal for this and future books…..

Congratulations are due to Robert McClure Smith, the winner of the Scotsman/Orange short story prize for a spiffy 7500 quid. Nice work, sir.

Philip Weiss remembers his editor and father figure, the late Roger Straus (of FSG fame) as a playful “rascal” in today’s New York Observer.

Trevor Corson really, really likes lobsters. To the point where he writes about them. Which is fine, although this is totally lost on me (as I’ll never eat shellfish.)

And finally, watch this get quoted everywhere: according to a recent study in the UK, one in five children could not identify a favorite book. Well guess what? Neither can I, and my problem has nothing to do with reading too little. It’s just bloody hard to pick one book!