- Mark hosts Colleen for a giveaway of Nicola Griffith’s Always. What she said.
- Caroline Spector on the horrors of tween magazines.
- The Washington Post has a hilarious, charming interview with Annie Dillard: "A whole hell of a lot of it rhymes, though I don’t expect anyone will notice. You can add punch to a paragraph by ending with a true rhyme."
- Want this lap desk. (Via someone!)
- Melissa Marr’s debut YA fantasy novel Wicked Lovely, which I’m looking forward to, gets a rare full review in Book World on a week that’s not a children’s lit week. I hope they’re going to be doing more of that.
- My hero Maureen posts some excellent plot exercises she used in her teaching last week.
- Ysabeau on the resurgence of Frye boots.
- Roger Sutton is looking for stories from lesbians who read Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind during their formative years for a second look the Horn Book is doing in honor of its 25th anniversary reissue.
- Sarah Weinman looks at superhero lit for Poets & Writers, and interviews two of my favoritest people, Dave Schwartz and Shana Cohen. I’ll post about Austin Grossman’s book soon, but basically, yes, it delivers exactly what it promises and that is a very fun thing.
- J.L. Bell on why girls write in diaries and boys use journals.
- Getting rid of books in the NYT. We’ve officially run out of shelf space and lately have been unloading some books it seems unlikely we’ll ever crack, or ever crack again. I feel lighter and less in danger from teetering stacks. The freed shelf space is immediately refilled. All is right with the world.