R. I. P. Keith Waterhouse, columnist, journalist, and author of Billy Liar, died yesterday, aged 80.
- Get ready to rumble next Easter: Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ will be published then. The book argues that St Paul invented the story that Jesus was the son of God.
- Click here for USA Today’s interactive calendar featuring highlights of books coming out in the US this fall. Hover over the date and you’ll see what’s coming out when. Hopefully they’ll add links to the reviews of the books, because the information right now is a bit, erm, spare.
- Save the words! Just adopt one and promise to use it in random blateration. (Seen here first.)
Awards! Philip Kerr’s novel If the Dead Rise Not won the world’s richest literary prize, the RBA International Prize for Crime Writing. More crime fiction awards from Down Under, as the Ned Kelly Awards were handed out to Nick Gadd for Ghostlines (First Fiction), Peter Corris for Deep Water and Kel Robertson for Smoke & Mirrors (joint winners for Fiction), Chloe Hooper for The Tall Man (True Crime), and Scott McDermott for “Fidget’s Farewell” (Short Story). The 2009 Man Booker Award shortlist will be announced (and posted) later today.
- There has been an awful lot of hoopla about Google’s Book Search the past week. See here, here vs. here, and judge here for yourself.
- Speaking of new book breeds, click here to customize your special edition of Douglas Coupland’s new book Generation A.
- List! Find out what the 10 most pirated e-books have been so far this year (and no, the fangs don’t come in at nr. 1).
Anthony Zuiker’s Level 26 is hailed as a new breed of book, combining book, movie, and website. Which is all well and good, but didn’t The 39 Clues series beat him to the novelty-punch? And Laura Esquivel wrote a book with a bona fide soundtrack way back in 1995 (The Law of Love, no longer in print in English). But I’m likely getting unnecessarily indignant here… 
- And finally, the back to school quiz from the Guardian. I scored 6, again.