Halloween news you should care about

Entertainment Weekly writes that Quirk Books plans to publish a sequel to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES next year called -- wait for it -- DAWN OF THE DREADFULS. Pro: Great name, interesting concept, creepy-little-kid cover. Con: No ability to draw on a Jane Austen plotline.

Rogue censor strikes Columbia, Tennessee library system

An unknown patron of the Maury County Library has been crossing out words in his or her borrowed books before returning them. The library is keeping the books in circulation because it can't afford to replace them, so other patrons will have to guess what dirty word was used in THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT.

It's not clear to me why, if librarians know which books were defaced, they can't just compare circulation records and single out the patron who recently checked out all those books. (And then go to that patron's house and spray-paint a giant obscenity on it. Censor this, you clod!) But to whoever's doing this, a much better prank would have been to just black out random words and make future readers confused.

Graphic: questionabletopic

Plagiarism Comedy "Gentlemen Broncos" In Theatres Today

Starring Sherri Ann Cabot, Ned Schneebly and, uh, Jemaine:

Publishers Weekly's Best 10 Books Of 2009

Read it and weep! A list of 100 will follow next week in the print edition, although last year's best list was well over 100 volumes long; I guess we must conserve our praise. This list is also a few weeks earlier than last year's, so if your book hasn't made it out in review copies yet, you're out of luck.

Out of the 10 I have read one, David Grann's THE LOST CITY OF Z. I liked it, but I have no idea whether it will make my best list for the year. (I had read four on last year's list.) Have you read any of these books? Care to share with the class?

“That was my BELL JAR, my TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. I thought that if it had been real they would just give me the factory — they wouldn’t even bother with a contest and those other kids.”

--Author and candy connoisseur Paul Rudnick on a significant book from his childhood, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY.

E-Reader Mockery: Meet The ¿Qué?

Barnes and Noble announced yesterday they will start selling readers made by competitor Plastic Logic, even though they are bringing out their own digital reader later this year.

GalleyCat notes that the name of the device, is pronounced "Q," but we will adopt the name Spanish speakers will use for it: The What? It's the apocryphal Chevy Nova story come true!

Also, the company's website capitalizes its full name accordingly: the "QUE proReader." Back in my day, medial capitals were rationed for the good of the nation. We stretched and did without, so the boys in blue could take those medial capitals to war. We didn't complain! That was just the way it was! Now get off my lawn!

Previously: The Vook; The Nook.

This Halloween, dress like a poet or make your pet do it for you

The Academy of American Poets offers a not-that-tongue-in-cheek guide to dressing up like a famous poet. Like the William Carlos Williams one, and it would be easy to put together on short notice.

Elsewhere in Halloween, the New Yorker had a literary-figure costume contest for pets, which is where this hard-boiled Sam Spade came from. I also appreciated Cat Humbert Humbert and Turtle Kurt Vonnegut.

I don't have any pets and I wouldn't even be dressing up at all this year, but my office is having a contest and the organizers are worth humoring. I probably won't be going as a book character because I always end up explaining it when I could be mainlining candy pumpkins; my ideas are grand but my execution is flawed. I did think about looking for a Doctor Manhattan bodysuit, since WATCHMEN costumes appear to be more popular than the movie was, but the effect would be ruined if I then had to put my own clothing over it to make it work-decent. ("So you're giant and blue... and wearing women's pants...")

Klosterman times two

Item the first: Chuck Klosterman has a new book out! I haven't read it but it's called EATING THE DINOSAUR and I will be prowling the new-releases shelf at the library for it. ESPN has an excerpt from it and Simonandschuster.com has part of the first chapter, about switching from interviewer to interviewee.

Item the second: Klosterman's memoir FARGO ROCK CITY is going to be made into a movie about (fictional) teenage metal fans. That in itself isn't very newsworthy until you find out that the screenplay will be co-written by frontman we love from band we love, Craig Finn of The Hold Steady.

22. John O'Hara, APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA

"Till the day you die I hope you never, never know what it feels like to have someone cut you open all the way down the front of you and let the freezing blast of air inside."

Thomas Hobbes once wrote that mankind life in the state of nature tends to be "nasty, brutish and short." John O'Hara would definitely agree with this description. This book was short (my Penguin Classics edition, the same one I could have hit a squirrel with, had HUGE text) and had its share of nastiness and brutishness -- a book it clearly influenced, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, looks optimistic by comparison -- but satisfying.

One night, Julian English, an upper-middle-class used-car dealer, married, no kids, gets drunk and throws a drink in someone's face at the country club. In the claustrophobic Pennsylvania town where he lives, doing this ruins his life; although he seems surprised at every turn at the consequences, we're not. Anyone's face would have been bad enough, but his target, Harry Reilly, is quite well-liked in town, a self-made man as opposed to Julian's inherited wealth; he's also part of the town's vocal Catholic minority, and the allegations by other people in town of prejudice seem to be... not completely unfounded. (We later find out there's another really good reason he shouldn't have thrown a drink at him.)

I thought this book was incredibly well-constructed; there wasn't a lot of action in terms of people going off and doing things, but the shifts in perspective between Julian, his wife Caroline and Al Grecco, a local mob operative, kept up the pace. Historically speaking, it's also a useful reminder that the Great Depression, during which this book is set, didn't affect the entire country equally -- extremely obvious point I know, but it bears repeating. The Englishes' hometown of Gibbsville is more affected by Prohibition, which (unsurprisingly, given how much Julian drinks) plays a crucial role in the story. And, as in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and "Mad Men," there's the shadow of a war -- in this case, World War I -- and the issue of Julian's non-service is thrown at him in a way that makes you suspect it is always brought up when someone really wants to wound him, like Philip Carey's foot.

At the same time, I had trouble getting a handle on Julian. His unreliability is established so early on that what he said didn't seem to matter -- when it wasn't "I love scotch. Scotch, scotchy scotch" -- but the rumors about his behavior that he is forced to confront after the incident suggest no one around him is particularly inclined to tell the truth, either. I felt closest to deciphering who he was in a flashback about him running away at fourteen, and via Caroline, who describes him as "turning on the charm like the water in the tub."

No one in Julian and Caroline's circle owns a farm any more; their idea of nature is sneaking out onto the golf course at the country club with their lovers. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA could be taken as a negative to Thornton Wilder's "Our Town": if we leave farming entirely, our sons will become alcoholics and our daughters will be promiscuous. That's way more simplistic than O'Hara is setting out to be -- the chapter on a young Caroline falling in love and trying to decipher the related social mores is one of the best and subtlest in the novel -- but Julian and Caroline are no George and Emily, which root cause is explored in the book. But when I looked it up, I found out "Our Town" was actually written after APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA was published, which makes it look either reassuring or more blindly nostalgic. I love "Our Town," but it made me question that fondness, not that I minded. In fact, I definitely want to check out some of O'Hara's other work.

LN VS. ML: 51 read, 49 unread.

Next up: I've started #49 WOMEN IN LOVE on Dailylit already; otherwise, either #50 Henry Miller's TROPIC OF CANCER (despite strong warnings against it) or #92 William Kennedy's IRONWEED.

I haven't had time to watch any of these yet (see fool's errand, below) but The Daily Beast has posted a bunch of videos of Philip Roth talking about his new book THE HUMBLING. I read somewhere, I can't remember where, that this is Roth's only interview he's planning to give for the book -- and when you're Philip Roth, you can get away with telling your publisher that -- but he was also busy at his 50th high school reunion.

Kickin' through the autumn leaves and wonderin' where it is you might be goin' to

Yesterday's fool's errand culminated in some reading on the front terrace of the Brooklyn Public Library. The late-afternoon sun hits it perfectly, but the building closes at 4:00 so the guys who work there start yanking the chairs around 3:25.

Across the street is a brand-new condo building designed by Richard Meier (pictured), in case you wanted to be neighbor to a library and are a raging exhibitionist.

"A book hasn't caused me this much trouble since WHERE'S WALDO went to that barber pole factory!"

-Tracy Jordan. On this week's "30 Rock" Tracy discovers that Liz Lemon used a lot of his foibles to write her book, which is ruining her male coworkers' lives. (Except Jack's, naturally.) And of those three, Alec Baldwin has written a book, Tina Fey is under contract to write one and Tracy Morgan's book just came out.

I love a good unnecessary comma.

You can get this on a T-shirt from a donkey rescue organization. Moreover, you must.

NYC: Congratulations, it's a bookstore!

Baby indie Greenlight Bookstore officially opens today in Fort Greene and doesn't it look handsome. One of its parents -- er, owners -- was inspired to open a bookstore from a college job at Three Lives in the West Village.

I hear there is free champagne starting at 7. And by "I hear," I mean it's on their invitation. You all raise a glass for me.

Photo: The Local

It's an e-book kind of week: Meet Kindle for PC

First there was the Kindle, then there was the Kindle iPhone application. Now Amazon is releasing the Kindle for PC, an application you can download for free and buy e-books with to read on your screen or, should you have a Kindle, sync to that so you're on the same "page" wherever you're reading.

I spend enough time staring at screens of various sizes, I don't buy most of my books and the ones I buy are often less than Amazon's going price. Also, while I own a PC laptop, it currently won't start, so I have no way to download this. Still, I think it's an intriguing idea. I had a very negative experience with public library e-books, but I think Amazon can do it better.

As a program designed to bring in new users, in the way that iTunes warms people up to the idea of owning a Mac, it could be very good for Amazon, but the demand for e-books is not like the demand for legal music and TV shows. A commenter at Engadget points out that this could turn any cheap netbook into a faux-Kindle which, based on this reviewer's report, might be more durable and pick up better wireless than the Kindle itself. (Distressingly, she also writes that the case weighs the same as a hardcover... portability fail!) According to CrunchGear, Barnes & Noble has had a PC e-reader for a while, and hey, look at that -- not only does it work for Mac, you get 6 free books when you download it. It makes one wonder, why isn't B&N further ahead?