Lit Bits & a Bit About Science

• Ben Dooley wonders if Murakami's lost his way, which I've wondered about too. You?
• Patricia has the goods as Stephen Colbert jumps into the print vs. online debate with Salman Rushdie discussing Oprah & Paris Hilton...which makes me cringe, even though it's a joke. The fatwa bit is funny though...if ever a fatwa could be funny, I mean. Which it's not. Except in this context. Okay?
• Felicia Sullivan kicks off her Writers Revealed Radio show which promises "it won't be books as usual."  I like the sound of that. I also can't wait to meet her when she's in town later this week.
• Moshin Hamid is interviewed at CBC about his 9/11 novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist - is it just me, or are you getting woefully tired of all this 9/11 novel talk?  I'm with C. Max Magee on what should and should not be expected from post 9/11 novels.
• Double-Tongued is on the prowl for words that fall within their double-tongued definition: fringe English, focusing on slang, jargon and new words. I'd like to toss matchy matchy into the ring - but only if they list the word twice, otherwise it loses its meaning entirely, right?
• The crew is finally picking up steam as they helm the mothership while Ed is away (again, I ask, where to?) for another 1.5 weeks and yes I'm counting down -- give them some love to get some wind in their sails. Never thought I'd say this: but I miss Ed.  Like, really, miss him.
• In honor of a Short Story Month that he did not get a card for (and he's really quite miffed to both not get a card and then also not be spammed, who wouldn't be?), Tod Goldberg gives us a list of his most-enjoyed short stories. It's a good one.
• And speaking of short stories, The Times ascribes the increase in short story interest to Claire Keegan and Karen Russell. Not sure I'm with them entirely on this one...
• Happiness trumps Memory - at least at this year's Royal Society Prizes, where Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness won over Eric Kandel's In Search of Memory.
• Other short-listed science books included: Homo Brittannicus by Chris Stringer, Lonesome George by Henry Nicholls, One in Three by Adam Wishart and The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson.
• All this science talk gets me thinking about The Family That Couldn't Sleep by D.T. Max -- a book I simply had to have in hardcover, as soon as I learned of it. I thought somehow this family with this rare disease was so fascinating I could roll the concept into a novel. Reality finally set in when it occurred to me that if a book had already been written about it, why on earth would I write another? I haven't even cracked the cover since it arrived months ago and now it's out in paperback. I'll have to settle down with it soon...
• ...as my mind is not only craving a re-read of many books, but is craving a bit of science, a bit of how things work. Not quite sure why, but I feel lucky that so many science-y tomes are making themselves known to me just at the moment I could use a proper medical/science fix. I faint at the sight of blood, so I'm not sure where this is all going, but I'm eager to move out of the realm of the unreal, the spooky, the made-up and into the world of cold, hard, interesting fact. Which can then be altered to suit my fictional purposes, of course!