Oh man, remember hyperlink novels? My favorite is 253 by Geoff Ryman.  It offers up a heavy dose of gamesmanship a la Cortazar, but written by a science fiction novelist, in HTML.  Because nothing expands the horizons of what the novel can do like being able to click on blue underlined words.  Really though, I do love that one.  I’m just glad we’ve come so far since then.

~ "The long white beard makes you look like Santa or a wizard." There’s a timely valentine to Darwin in the latest issue of A Public Space.

~ Colm Toibin writes on Edward Carpenter’s fearless nineteenth century homosexuality and socialism. Toibin, remember, will be one among many great speakers discussing Obama’s literary influences in our store this Friday.

~ Leonard Lopate spoke to belgian novelist Amelie Nothomb on Wednesday and yes she was charming and casually arrogant, but not nearly as entertaining, I promise, as she will be in our store this Thursday evening.

~ Look, Mr. Gaiman, I know you have a new movie to sell us on, but could you please be less British?  It’s creeping me out.

~ Here’s Frank Kermode discussing Milton. Think of it as a dry digestif of smart to follow the course of stupid just below.

~ "But then, Jedediah Killinger III was not an ordinary man.  He was a man who made his own rules and called his own game." The Pitch presents "Killinger!", your new favorite book.

~ Bookslut has a lengthy interview up with Brian Michael Bendis, the comics writer who spilled John Hughes in your Spiderman.

~ We haven’t posted much about Updike’s death here, but last week  The New Yorker ran a series of short but lovely remembrances, the best being this by Eugenides. 

~ See also Adam Gopnik’s brief tribute to the man and, behind a subscription wall, a magnificent collection of excerpts from Updike’s own writing for the magazine.

~ Should we trust Google with the entirety of our textual history and intellectual output? Whoops! Too Late!

~ Lou Anders, one of the best SF editors today, fawns over Adam Roberts, one of the best SF writers today.  I’d like to mock him for his adoration, but it’s too damn deserved.

~ Stephen Colbert would like his Newbery medal now please.

~ What is the worth of the statement if it cannot protect the man? Amartya Sen discusses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the latest New Republic.

~ For more on that great statement of shared value, here’s an animated version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which turned 60 this past fall.  Good font work, too.

~ Does taking a photo entail an obligation toward its subject? Vollmann discusses photography and social contract in the latest Bookforum.

~ Poor T.C. Boyle. He showed up to the party wearing the same dress as Nancy Horan.