Smatterings

After Anne Enright won the Booker Prize, chair Howard Davies went on the offensive against “cheering” book reviews. Times literary editor Erica Wagner responds.

Speaking of Enright, she’s getting a fair amount of flak for a piece she wrote for the LRB about her negative feelings toward Gerry and Kate McCann. But before pouncing, why not read the whole thing first?

If you’re in the UK, don’t expect to see GONE BABY GONE anytime soon,

as the outcry is about “parallels” to the McCann case. Which don’t make

sense to me since the book came out almost 10 years ago, but hey.

And if you want to use some variant of “2012” and “Olympics” in your book, expect to be slapped down by the UK government on copyright infringement. Lovely.

The Carnival of Criminal Minds continued yesterday at the Rap Sheet, where J. Kingston Pierce assembled a cornucopia of links on stuff related to crime fiction.

Newsday’s Denise Flaim has the remarkable story of separated twins reunited to search for their birth family.

Janis Turk at the Dallas Morning News takes a tour of Tony Hillerman country.

With regards to the ongoing fight about whether Raymond Carver’s “original” short stories should be published, I’m with Dan Kois at Vulture: make it available and let the readers judge.

It might not be the greatest news by a longshot but IF I DID IT is, indeed, selling rather well.

Wesley Stace picks his top ten books on ventriloquism.

Toronto Star publishing reporter Vit Wagner is at the International Festival of Authors (which I have to attend next year, dammit) and reports back on Jasper Fforde’s event.

And finally, the mystery of Mona Lisa’s missing eyebrows and lashes may be solved.