…and then you suddenly get the flu.  Followed by the Cold From Hell (which by today has been downgraded to merely Very Annoying).  Meaning all my wonderful plans last week for a well-stocked blog flew out the window with that gruesome Easterly wind that can just about bugger off now, don’t you think, and I’m left scrambling to get everything ready this week.    Hope you all are feeling much better yourselves.  And I also hope that Spring will hurry up and get here already!

• R. I. P. The literary world has lost a star with the death of Chinua Achebe, best known for Things Fall Apart, last week.  Obituaries can be found here and here.  Horror legend James Herbert (The Fog, The Secret of Crickley Hall) also died last week.

• Thankfully, African writers are going strong, even without Achebe.  The Guardian profiles Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go.  Ms. Selasi will be at Borderkitchen in The Hague in April, by the way.

• Attention all self-published authors! Writer’s Digest has a competition to get your book the attention it deserves from the big, traditional publishing houses.  Early Bird deadline is April 1st, though, and I’m really hoping this isn’t some cruel joke!  Thanks to (soon-to-be self-published author) Tarikua G. Woldetsadick for bringing this to our attention. 

• Planning on redecorating? The Huffington Post has some ideas for that book nook you’ve been thinking about.

• Awards! Junot Diaz beat out stiff British competition to win the Sunday Times Short Story Award.  One of my favorite prizes, the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, went to Reginald Bakeley’s Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop.  Congratulations!  Perhaps one day you will be featured in our Weird Book of the Week corner.    Be sure to check the shortlist, too.  Tan Twan Eng won the Man Asian Literary Prize, for The Garden of Evening Mists.  The 2013 Blue Peter Book Awards were handed out to Liz Pichon for Tom Gates: Genius Ideas, Mostly (Best Story) and Nick Arnold and Tony De Saulles for Horrible Science: House of Horrors (Best Book with Facts)(just the category name deserves a prize, I think!).

• Gaimaniacs, having trouble waiting for his new book this summer?  Then head on over to the Guardian’s site for Down to a Sunless Sea, an exclusive short story.

• While we’re on the subject of rabid fans, Donna Tartt’s third novel The Goldfinch is due out in October, and the Huffington Post has a sneak peek of the cover.

• Interview! The Telegraph has a very lengthy talk with George R. R. Martin.  No word on the publication date of book 6, though, sadly.

• This video’s for Simone, although I’m sure a few of you reading this are closet-bookbinders, too: Herbert Weitz, Book Binder to the Stars.

• Lists! Flavorwire seems to be made of them.  Here’s just a sample: The 10 Best Millennial Authors You Probably Haven’t Read (Yet), 20 Embarrassingly Bad Book Covers for Classic Novels, and The 25 Greatest Essay Collections of All Time.

• And finally, a video that should have been posted here three weeks ago.  Sorry for the delay, lovely people of the Amsterdam Spui OFoundation flashmob!

Flashmob Spui OFoundation from O Foundation on Vimeo.