Smatterings

The Booker Prize shortlist is announced, and the usual suspects aren’t on it – no CHILD 44, no NETHERLAND, and no ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE. John Sutherland, your YouTube moment awaits! And we want it NOW! Don’t try to get out of it!

The Baltimore Sun runs an abbreviated version of my newest column, making available my take on crime fiction by John Harvey, Mo Hayder and Carol Goodman.

Not available was what I thought about Chelsea Cain’s SWEETHEART, but Patrick Anderson sums up a great many of my feelings in yesterday’s review in the Washington Post.

Literary agent Bill Clegg has sold his crack addiction memoir to Little, Brown for as much as $350,000 for North American rights.

Val McDermid chats about her new standalone, A DARKER DOMAIN, with the Scotsman.

Jon Jordan offers a handy guide to surviving Bouchercon.

J.K. Rowling has won her lawsuit against RDR publications.

Have no fear, Bolano freaks: there are plenty of works by the author of THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES and 2666 still waiting to be published in English.

TOW Books, a publishing imprint by McSweeney’s editor John Warner, will make its books available for free.

Forgotten in the Weekend Update: Ed Park’s impressionist essay on the aftermath of ⁹⁄₁₁ in the NYT City Section.

John Scalzi on why the Large Hadron Collider won’t signal the end of the world. I mean, REALLY? Come on! (via)

When a mistaken date causes stock calamity.

When the runaround produces calamity.

And finally, this is still funny 25 years later.