Sorry, nobody’s around to run the joint right now. I’m hanging out with my sister up in snowy Massachusetts, and whatever time I have left over for writing goes into the book or total frivolity. If you enjoy voting in or second-guessing award contests, take a look at the 2008 Weblog Awards nominees. For the second year running, MaudNewton.com is . . .
Penn acquires Gotham Book Mart’s literary treasures, in “a small victory of resistance against entropy and decay.”
Glenn Goldman of Los Angeles’ Book Soup died of pancreatic cancer a day after announcing plans to sell the legendary store.
Donald Westlake has died at 75. Levi Stahl recently got me into his pseudonymous Parker novels.
This year, instead of a tree, we decorated Max’s beloved pole lamp. He calls the result a “3-way collision between Festivus austerity, Xmas kitsch, and midcentury modernism.” I call it, “We can take all that down on the 1st, right?” Christmas Day was an intimate and jolly affair. Joseph brought his cornbread-sausage-fennel stuffing and his chocolate bourbon pecan pie. . . .