Ye gods, an actual post with links and stuff

Looking to attend a book festival this weekend? You can’t do better than the Virginia Festival of the Book, whose lineup is nothing short of staggering.

Craig McDonald returns with a couple of top-shelf interviews , this time with gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman and songwriter/renaissance man Tom Russell.

Nicholas Blincoe describes the pleasures of being translated into other languages — even if he can’t read any of them for himself.

Randy Wayne White has a new Doc Ford novel out, and he catches up with USA Today to talk all about it.

And the top 20 villains are…the devil, that crazy guy from Patrick Suskind’s PERFUME, and many more as picked by the people running Waterstone’s.

The whole Miramax/Disney/books thing is making my head crazy. Will Miramax Books be absorbed by Hyperion? Will the brothers Weinstein start up a new imprint by poaching Rob Weisbach? Will they do the same thing every night and try to take over the world? Really, it boggles the mind…(links from Galleycat)

Seven things we should know about Elliot Perlman — and you can read about them in Rebecca Caldwell’s piece about the author of SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY.

Ali Karim pens a long love letter to Lawrence Block’s latest novel, ALL THE FLOWERS ARE DYING, over at January Magazine.

If you’re a math geek like me and want to have some fun, play along with the Reductive Literary Equations thread over at Tingle Alley.

And finally, first there was the Tournament of Books. Now, say hello to the Tournament of Exes. I’d enter, but frankly, my stories are really too boring….