Novelist Edward P. Jones will be the keynote speaker Sunday, April 1, at the annual L.L. Winship / PEN New England Awards. Jones is the author of "The Known World." Award recipients include Louise Gluck, Sebastian Junger, and K.C. Frederick. The session at the Kennedy Library in Dorchester (the view is unbeatable) begins at 3 p.m. Here's a link.

1. Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin.
2. The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion. Vintage.
3. Three Cups of Tea
By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Penguin.
4. Great Food Fast
By the editors of Martha Stewart Living. Clarkson Potter.
5. The Glass Castle
By Jeannette Walls. Scribner.
6. Dreams From My Father
By Barack Obama. Three Rivers.
7. The Bookseller of Kabul
By Asne Seierstad. Back Bay.
8. The Places in Between
By Rory Stewart. Harvest
9. Brutal
By Kevin Weeks and Phyllis Karas. HarperCollins.
10. Is It Hot in Here? Or Is It Me?
By Pat Wingert and Barbara Kantrowitz. Workman.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Inheritance of Loss
By Kiran Desai. Grove.
2. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
By Kim Edwards. Penguin.
3. The Namesake
By Jhumpa Lahiri. Mariner.
4. Blue Shoes and Happiness
By Alexander McCall Smith. Anchor.
5. Intuition
By Allegra Goodman. Dial.
6. Love Walked In
By Marisa de los Santos. Plume.
7. Man Gone Down
By Michael Thomas. Grove.
8. Black Swan Green
By David Mitchell. Random House.
9. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
By Lisa See. Random House.
10. The Kite Runner
By Khaled Hosseini. Riverhead.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. Grace (Eventually)
By Anne Lamott. Riverhead.
2. How Doctors Think
By Jerome Groopman. Houghton Mifflin.
3. The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne. Beyond Words.
4. A Long Way Gone
By Ishmael Baeh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
5. Women and Money
By Suze Orman. Spiegel & Grau.
6. I Feel Bad About My Neck
By Nora Ephron. Knopf.
7. The No A------ Rule
By Robert I. Sutton. Warner.
8. The Audacity of Hope
By Barack Obama. Crown.
9. Deep Economy
By Bill McKibben. Times.
10. Infidel
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Free Press.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. Nineteen Minutes
By Jodi Picoult. Atria.
2. Heart-Shaped Box
By Joe Hill. Morrow.
3. Shopaholic and Baby
By Sophie Kinsella. Dial.
4. Then We Came to the End
By Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown.
5. Christine Falls
By Benjamin Black. Holt.
6. What Is the What
By Dave Eggers. McSweeney’s.
7. Whitethorn Woods
By Maeve Binchy. Knopf.
8. For a Few Demons More
By Kim Morrison. Eos.
9. The Post-Birthday World
By Lionel Shriver. HarperCollins.
10. Innocent Traitor
By Alison Weir. Ballantine.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

Book-blurbs -- written endorsements of new books by other authors, quoted on dust-jackets -- are a notoriously phony tradition. New York Times columnist Russell Baker once wrote a column about them, in which he revealed his own official position: "I will read a book or blurb it, but not both."

However, quotes from published reviews, usually printed on paperback versions of books, would seem to be above reproach. Even here, there ought to be some kind of etiquette. Quoting a reviewer who endorses a book as an aside, in the course of trashing another, would seem to cross some line.

Oxford University Press has just published the paperback version of historian Robert Middlekauff's history of the War of Independence, "The Glorious Cause." On the back of the book, and again inside the front cover, is this excerpt from the New York Times Review by Michiko Kakutani, not of Middlekauff's book, but of David McCullough's "1776": "The reader in search of a wide-ranging overview of the Revolution would be better off turning to ...more recent works like 'The Glorious Cause' by Robert Middlekauff."

Besides repeating Kakutani's error in calling Middlekauff's book "more recent" -- it's a revised edition of a 1982 book -- Oxford's use of this passage is a gratuitious sucker-punch at McCullough. Besides that, it implies that there was nothing in the Times review of Middlekauff's book, if there was one, that could be quoted to its credit. I don't know, but I would guess, that Middlekauff would be embarrassed.

In the latest controvery involving alleged literary fabrication -- one that frankly is dripping out rather than rolling out, an article by Alex Heard in The New Republic of March 19 has fired a broadside of 10-pounders across the bow of author David Sedaris, accusing him of making up far more in his enormously popular comedic stories than he lets on. Sedaris himself has often said he embellishes a good tale, but Heard contends that Sedaris does more, that some of his pieces are nearer fiction than reality, and that they'd likely be labeled that way if it wouldn't hurt sales.

The mainstream press mostly has given this "he said, he said" contretemps a good leaving alone, and its footprints are hard to track. But you can get a sense of Heard's piece here (even though most of it is behind a firewall), and a stinging response from Sedaris deep inside this Newsday article.

Pauline W. Chen (Dominic Chavez/Globe Staff)

As always happens, much of my interview with Dr. Pauline Chen, author of "Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality," did not fit in the story about her in Tuesday's Globe. Here is what she said about the gifts that dying people give to their doctors:

"People say, 'you work with people who are dying -- that must be really depressing.' But they really do a huge amount for us. If you look at the studies, they show that it is very important for people at the end of life to have something called 'generativity' -- generousness, giving. I have found that people at the end of life do show how limitless human courage and generosity is. I'll give you one example, of many:

"There was a patient, a youngish man, who was dying. I was at the end of my training at that time. So I tried to do everything to help that family and that man. A couple of weeks before he died, his family members came up to me and said, 'Dr. Chen, we really appreciate everything you're doing for us. But we want you to take care of yourself, we want you to have a life.' Back then, I wasn't having a life. I was always at the hospital."

How did they know that about you?

"I don't know. They sensed it. Can you believe that at that moment, the most difficult time in their lives, they were talking to me about my life? It was amazing."

By Judith Maas

SUNDAY: Edward P. Jones (‘‘All Aunt Hagar’s Children’’) speaks at 3 p.m., at the PEN Hemingway Awards, Kennedy Library, Columbia Point.

MONDAY: Poets Peter Filkins, Valerie Lawson, and Sue Owen read at 7 p.m., at the Harvard-Yenching Library, 2 Divinity Ave., Cambridge. ..... Barry Moser discusses ‘‘A Feeling for the Vulgar,’’ at 5 p.m., at Boston University’s College of Communications, Room 101, 640 Comm. Ave.

TUESDAY: Ann Hood reads from ‘‘The Knitting Circle,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge.

WEDNESDAY: Chet Raymo reads from ‘‘Valentine,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ..... Ali A. Allawi discusses ‘‘The Occupation of Iraq,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at First Parish Church, 3 Church St., Cambridge. ..... Rishi Reddi discusses ‘‘Karma and Other Stories,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline. ..... Jamaica Kincaid reads at 6:30 p.m., in Room 6-120 (enter at 77 Mass. Ave.), MIT, Cambridge. ..... Marilyn Johnson discusses ‘‘The Dead Beat,’’ at 7 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Boston University, Kenmore Square. ..... Poet Michael S. Harper reads at 4 p.m., in Tisch Library, Tufts University, Medford . ..... Conor Murphy reads from his short stories and essays at noon in Killian Hall, Room 14W-111, 160 Memorial Dr., MIT, Cambridge.

THURSDAY: Poets W.S. Di Piero, John Hennessy, and Don Share read at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith. ..... Susan Piver discusses ‘‘How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books.

FRIDAY: Brendan Halpin reads from ‘‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress,’’ at 7 p.m., at Jabberwocky Bookshop, 50 Water St., Newburyport. ..... David Bulley, Jeannette Angell, and poet Regie Gibson read at 8 p.m., at Out of the Blue Gallery, 106 Prospect St., Cambridge.

SATURDAY: Sebastian Junger discusses ‘‘A Death in Belmont,’’ at 2 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith. ..... Poets Michael Brown, Sean Theall, and others read at 3:30 p.m., as part of the Brockton Library Poetry Series, 304 Main St., Brockton.

Events are subject to change.

Cormac McCarthy

Oprah Winfrey announced today that novelist Cormac McCarthy is her choice for her next Oprah's Book Club selection, for his novel "The Road." He'll appear on the daytime TV doyenne's show on an unannounced future date.

This will be an interesting show, because McCarthy is extremely publicity-shy. In fact, the Winfrey announcement said it's his first-ever TV interview. There are all sorts of anecdotes about McCarthy's quirks. One I remember -- perhaps apocryphal -- is that he carries a supply of 100-watt lightbulbs with him when he travels, and when he checks into a hotel, he changes the bulbs in the lamps in his room so that he can see to read.

Presumably, the lights on the Oprah stage-set will be bright enough for reading. The question is whether they will be so bright that they ruin his privacy.

David Nasaw

Historian David Nasaw, whose deal with the Kennedy family to write a biography of Joseph P. Kennedy was described in the Globe here, has won the New-York Historical Society American Book Prize. (Oddly enough, the name is hyphenated) The second annual $50,000 prize is for Nasaw's 2006 biography, "Andrew Carnegie." Nasaw is professor of history at City University of New York. Doris Kearns Goodwin won last year for "Team of Rivals."

Daily newspaper coverage has been under siege recently, and, yes, that includes books sections. In response to a toughened economic climate, papers in Dallas and San Francisco in the last couple of years cut back on coverage of books and literary issues, though in both cases much was restored after readers protested. And now the mighty Los Angeles Times, the primary stand-alone section west of the Mississippi, is following suit.

The Times announced this week that it will switch to producing a section that books shares with editorial opinions, making it a twin destination, with less space of course. The resulting books coverage, which rumor has it will decrease from 12 pages to 8, will still be substantial and dwarf most coverage elsewhere. But it's a sad day nonetheless for Southern Californians who'd rather read than surf.

An American in France, 1917

Paul Fussell's 1989 World War II memoir, "Wartime," was dedicated to his parents, "who sent socks and books." It seems that real books are still craved by men in harm's way. Richard Davies, a spokesman for Abebooks.com, the Canadian online bookseller, writes to say that American servicemen and women (and civilians) in Iraq are not ordering cheap thrillers to read in their free time, but serious books of all kinds. Here are samples of books ordered from Abebooks and sent to secure American bases in Iraq:

"The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes," by Ralph Bagnold.

"Lawrence and the Arabs" (biography of T.E. Lawrence), by Robert Graves.

"Organic Chemistry," by Paula Y. Bruice.

"Just and Unjust Wars," by Michael Walzer.

"The Art of War," by Sun Tzu.

"Writing Poetry," by Barbara Drake.

"Old West Antiques and Collectables," by John Kolpec

"Let's Play Saxophone," by Herb Couf.

"The Catcher in the Rye," by J. D. Salinger.

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," by J.K. Rowling.

"The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year," by Armin A. Brott.

"The Way of Zen," by Alan W. Watts.

"Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus," by John Gray.

Davies writes, "There were no [John] Grishams or [Stephen] Kings, or even a Dan Brown. Soldiers described how paperbacks are readily available on bases. Unlike soldiers stationed in the U.S. or Germany, Iraq-based soldiers cannot go off base in their leisure hours, so for some reading is a key activity. I know of one soldier who claims Cervantes saved his life because he was safely reading 'Don Quixote,' rather than exercising with his colleagues, or going to the base store, when the base was hit by a mortar attack."

If you really love books (and if you didn't, you wouldn't be reading this), and if you like to be ahead of the publishing curve, then consider heading down to New York June 1 - 3 for BookExpo, the annual gathering of the publishing tribe to tout its upcoming titles.

The annual conference bounces around the country, and the New York site is as close as it gets. BookExpo has just launched a web site, if you'd like to see what's scheduled.

1. Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin.
2. The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion. Vintage.
3. Dreams From My Father
By Barack Obama. Three Rivers.
4. The Worst Hard Time
By Timothy Egan. Mariner.
5. Three Cups of Tea
By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Penguin.
6. Great Food Fast
By the editors of Martha Stewart Living. Clarkson Potter.
7. The Tipping Point
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.
8. The Glass Castle
By Jeannette Walls. Scribner.
9. The Measure of a Man
By Sidney Poitier. HarperSanFrancisco.
10. The Places in Between
By Rory Stewart. Harvest.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Inheritance of Loss
By Kiran Desai. Grove.
2. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
By Kim Edwards. Penguin.
3. Intuition
By Allegra Goodman. Dial.
4. The Namesake
By Jhumpa Lahiri. Mariner.
5. Love Walked In
By Marisa de los Santos. Plume.
6. Saving Fish From Drowning
By Amy Tan. Ballantine.
7. Man Gone Down
By Michael Thomas. Grove.
8. The Old Wine Shades
By Martha Grimes. Signet.
9. Arthur and George
By Julian Barnes. Vintage.
10. Blue Shoes and Happiness
By Alexander McCall Smith. Anchor.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. A Long Way Gone
By Ishmael Baeh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
2. The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne. Beyond Words.
3. Women and Money
By Suze Orman. Spiegel & Grau.
4. The Audacity of Hope
By Barack Obama. Crown.
5. How Doctors Think
By Jerome Groopman. Houghton Mifflin.
6. The Intellectual Devotional
By David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim. Rodale.
7. Infidel
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Free Press.
8. You on a Diet
By Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz. Free Press.
9. In an Instant
By Lee and Bob Woodruff. Random House.
10. Second Chance
By Zbigniew Brzezinski. Basic.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. What Is the What
By Dave Eggers. McSweeney’s.
2. Nineteen Minutes
By Jodi Picoult. Atria.
3. Shopaholic and Baby
By Sophie Kinsella. Dial.
4. Whitethorn Woods
By Maeve Binchy. Knopf.
5. Heyday
By Kurt Andersen. Random House.
6. You Don’t Love Me Yet
By Jonathan Lethem. Doubleday.
7. Step On a Crack
By James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Little, Brown.
8. The Post-Birthday World
By Lionel Shriver. HarperCollins.
9. Christine Falls
By Benjamin Black. Holt.
10. For One More Day
By Mitch Albom. Hyperion.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

Al Gore and friend

Former vice president Al Gore's new book, "The Assault on Reason," is shaping up to be one of the hottest nonfiction titles of the spring. Scheduled to be released nationwide on May 22, the book seeks to explain (according to promotional verbiage) "how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degradation of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason."

In the wake of his Academy Award for the movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," and shifting attitudes toward the hazards of climate change, Gore has become a huge celebrity. He'll go on a dozen-city book tour when the book comes out, and sponsors had better be prepared for overflow crowds -- citing Nielsen BookScan, the book-sales rating service, Publishers Weekly online says Gore's paperback book version of "An Inconvenient Truth" has sold 315,000 copies.

Sometimes the bottom line is also the grim reaper.

That's part of the problem facing Borders Group Inc., the corporate book retailer that just announced an unexpectedly large fourth-quarter loss and, more to the point for its customers, a drastic solution.

Responding to the red ink that totaled almost $74 million over three months, Borders said it would cut the number of its Waldenbooks stores by more than 40 percent, from 564 to 300, by the end of next year.

The result is more bad news for bookstores, not that they need it. The move may provide a side benefit for some struggling independent outlets, but it's the rare bookshop owner who wants to build profits through the emptied shelves of competitors.

The chain has dozens of outlets across New England and is a fixture in many smaller cities. There's no word yet on which area stores will be shuttered.

My post below about the relative parsimony of American prose book prizes is as least partly in error, for omitting the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, established last year. The first winner of this $100,000 prize, announced yesterday, is British writer Tamar Yellin, for the novel "The Genizah at the House of Shepher." The prize is funded by the Rohr family foundation and adminisetered by the Jewish Book Council. Sami Rohr, of Miami, made his fortune in real estate development. Find out more about the prize here.

I say "partly" in error because this is a specialized prize, as distinct from the Pulitzer, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner, or National Book Critics Circle Awards. There are others, such as the new Pritzker Military Library award for lifetime achievement in writing about American military history, also $100,000, to be announced in October. The winner doesn't have to be an American, and the original work doesn't have to be written in English.

A nonspecialized book competition for works of prose, in English by American writers, with a prize of that size, even half that size, remains to be established. The country is thick with billionaires who could easily endow it, and perhaps it will happen.

William Landay (Dominic Chavez/Globe Staff)

Outtakes from my interview with Newton's William Landay, author of the Boston-based crime novel, "The Strangler," for Tuesday's Globe profile: We talked about writers' apprenticeships, and how he had shunned formal study of the novelist's trade:

"I was leery of that, and I don't mean to be critical of it, because I don't know if it's a good thing or not. I was skeptical that [fiction writing] could be taught, and skeptical of the workshop method. I wasn't the sort of guy who would have enjoyed being in that situation. The way I prefer to work is to go off and write my book and polish it until it is as good as it possibly can be. The idea of sitting in a workshop, where everybody is tearing each other down, and where you're showing unfinished work, and where there's politics in the room, didn't sound like a supportive environment, which, to me, for a creative endeavor, is what you want.

"I also think there is an overemphasis on credentials. If someone has an MFA from [the Iowa Writer's Workshop], it's no guarantee of anything. I am leery of my own credentials, too. People look at me and focus on the fact that I was an assistant D.A. and project all sorts of things on my books, as if that is some sort of guarantee of authenticity. But the credential guarantees nothing, and that was one of the important lessons I learned [before he became published] as I was off writing pretty bad books."

Stacks of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" in 2003

In surely one of the strangest publishing announcements in history, Scholastic Inc. said today that 16,700 tons of paper will be consumed in the 12 million-copy first printing of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final installment of the British fantasy epic.

Lest you be appalled at this figure, Scholastic also announced that all the books "will be printed on paper that contains a minimum of 30% post-consumer waste fiber," and that 65% of the paper will be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. That certification means that environmentally and socially responsible forestry practices were used in the making of the paper.

In newspapering, we used to say that a long and boring story was "a frightful waste of trees." "Deathly Hallows," to be released July 21, will be 784 pp. One hopes it will not be a frightful waste of socially responsible forest-clearing.

SUNDAY: Heather Cox Richardson discusses “West from Appomattox,” at 3 p.m., at the Concord Bookshop, 65 Main St., Concord … Frank Tropea and John De Vito discuss “The Immortal Marilyn,” at 2 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop, Cambridge.

MONDAY: Sarah Thyre reads from “Dark at the Roots,” at 7 p.m., at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline … Victor J. Stenger discusses “God – the Failed Hypothesis,” at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop.

TUESDAY: Jonathan Lethem reads from “You Don’t Love Me Yet,” at 6 p.m., at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline ($2) … Pagan Kennedy reads from “The First Man-Made Man,” at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville … Stephen Prothero discusses “Religious Literacy,” at 7 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Boston University, Kenmore Square … Sarah Thyre discusses “Dark at the Roots,” at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop … Children’s author Janet Wong speaks at 7:30 p.m., in Vanderslice Hall, Boston College, Chestnut Hill ($15).

[No Wednesday listings]

THURSDAY: Tina Cassidy reads from “Birth,” at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge … Mike Farrell reads from “Just Call Me Mike,” at 7 p.m., at the Brookline Booksmith … Pauline Chen discusses “Final Exam,” at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books … Poet Nathaniel Bellows reads at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge … Danielle Legros Georges reads from “Maroon,” at 1 p.m., at the UMass-Boston bookstore, 100 Morrissey Blvd.

FRIDAY: Brendan Halpin reads from “Dear Catastrophe Waitress,” at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store … Daja Meston reads from “Comes the Peace,” at 7 p.m., at Jabberwocky Bookshop, 50 Water St., Newburyport.

SATURDAY: Richard Peck reads from “On the Wings of Heroes,” at 12 p.m., at the Wellesley Booksmith, 82 Central St., Wellesley, and at 3 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, 1 Worcester Rd., Framingham.

Events are subject to change.

Elizabeth Alexander

The selection Friday of Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander as the first winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize reinforces the point made below that American prizes for poetry are a lot bigger than those for prose. The Jackson prize, given by Poets & Writers Inc., is $50,000. The Bollingen Prize, awarded recently to Frank Bidart, is $100,000. The largest prose award is the PEN/Faulkner, which is $15,000.

Perhaps it's fitting, though -- poets sell on the whole so many fewer books than prose authors, that they're more likely to need the money.

1 FLOTSAM, by David Wiesner. (Clarion, $17.)(Ages 4 to 7)
2 DOG, by Matthew Van Fleet. Photography by Brian Stanton. (Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster, $14.99.) (Ages 3 to 5)
3 A GOOD DAY, written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes. (Greenwillow/HarperCollins, $16.99.)(Ages 3 to 5)
4 PIRATES DON'T CHANGE DIAPERS, by Melinda Long. Illustrated by David Shannon. (Harcourt, $16.)(Ages 4 to 8)
5 DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE, written and illustrated by Tad Hills. (Schwartz & Wade, $15.99.) (Ages 3 to 7)

SOURCE: New York Times

1. Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin.
2. Dreams From My Father
By Barack Obama. Three Rivers.
3. The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion. Vintage.
4. The Tipping Point
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.
5. Top 10: Boston
DK Travel.
6. Poets Thinking
By Helen Vendler. Harvard University.
7. Black Mass
By Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill. PublicAffairs.
8. The Measure of a Man
By Sidney Poitier. HarperSanFrancisco.
9. The Glass Castle
By Jeannette Walls. Scribner.
10. 2006/07 Boston Restaurants
Edited by Ruth Tobias. Zagat Survey.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Inheritance of Loss
By Kiran Desai. Grove.
2. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
By Kim Edwards. Penguin.
3. Man Gone Down
By Michael Thomas. Grove.
4. Love Walked In
By Marisa de los Santos. Plume.
5. Saving Fish From Drowning
By Amy Tan. Ballantine.
6. The Tenth Circle
By Jodi Picoult. Washington Square.
7. Arthur and George
By Julian Barnes. Vintage.
8. Labyrinth
By Kate Mosse. Berkley.
9. Snow
By Orhan Pamuk. Vintage.
10. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
By Lisa See. Random House.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. A Long Way Gone
By Ishmael Baeh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
2. The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne. Beyond Words.
3. Women and Money
By Suze Orman. Spiegel & Grau.
4. The Audacity of Hope
By Barack Obama. Crown.
5. The Best Life Diet
By Bob Greene. Simon & Schuster.
6. In an Instant
By Lee and Bob Woodruff. Random House.
7. Infidel
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Free Press.
8. About Alice
By Calvin Trillin. Random House.
9. American Bloomsbury
By Susan Cheever. Simon & Schuster.
10. Leap!
By Sara Davidson. Random House.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. What Is the What
By Dave Eggers. McSweeney’s.
2. Nineteen Minutes
By Jodi Picoult. Atria.
3. Step On a Crack
By James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Little, Brown.
4. Shopaholic and Baby
By Sophie Kinsella. Dial.
5. Suite Française
By Irène Némirovsky. Knopf.
6. Whitethorn Woods
By Maeve Binchy. Knopf.
7. The Double Bind
By Chris Bohjalian. Shaye Areheart.
8. Sisters
By Danielle Steel. Delacorte.
9. Make Way for Ducklings
By Robert McCloskey. Viking.
10. For One More Day
By Mitch Albom. Hyperion.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

"Jesus: The Family Tomb," by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, the book (and associated movie) that claims an ancient ossuary found 27 years ago in Israel contained the remains of Jesus and members of his family, along with Mary Magdalene, has caused a sensation, as well as all sorts of comment about the significance of human burial.

While hardly anybody takes seriously the book's claims, the suggestion of newfound material relics of the New Testament story reminds us that such relics have always been important touchstones of medieval Christianity. Consider the legend of the Holy Grail and bits of wood from the True Cross, said to be so common in Europe that the Cross must have been hundreds of feet tall. Only recently, the Shroud of Turin was shown to have been made -- no one knows how -- in the 14th century.

The story is also a reminder of the enduring fascination with the biblical narrative, even to those with no belief in its claims of divinity. At the very least, it's a moneymaker.

The Shakespeare Sonnet-thon is an evening of laughter, tears, trepidation, and joy. For four hours, dozens of volunteers – ranging from children to octogenarians – recite or sing the 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare.
Published as a collection in 1609, the sonnets are rich in drama and relevance. The so-called Jewish mother sonnet (#71) opens: “No longer mourn for me when I am dead.” One year a young actor in pajamas took on sonnet #27 that begins “Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,’’ before he lay down on the stage with his teddy bear.
Linda Lowy, director of Shakespeare Now! Theater Company, which brings live Shakespeare performances to schools, founded the sonnet-thon. She was inspired by a sonnet class taught by Jonathan Epstein, a member of Shakespeare and Company in Lenox. Now the sonnet-thon’s master of ceremonies, he riffs on the Bard’s life and offers a dramatic reading of a sonnet or two himself.
The fifth annual Sonnet-thon starts at 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 4, at the Boston Public Library.

If you're interested in participating, e-mail Lowy at info@shakespearenow.org or call Shakespeare Now! at 781-326-3643.

Compiled by Judith Maas

SUNDAY: Barry Lopez, Emily Hiestand, and others read from ‘‘Home Ground,’’ at 4 p.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge. ..... Kathleen Kennedy Townsend discusses ‘‘Failing America’s Faithful,’’ at 1 p.m., at the Kennedy Library, Columbia Point. ..... Myriam Cyr discusses ‘‘Letters of a Portuguese Nun,’’ at 3 p.m., at the Concord Bookshop, 65 Main St., Concord.

MONDAY: Poets Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Kathryn Maris read at 8 p.m., at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, 56 Brattle St., Cambridge ($3). ..... Daniel Mason reads from ‘‘A Far Country,’’ at 6 p.m., at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline ($2). ..... Lionel Shriver reads from ‘‘The Post-Birthday World,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. ..... Polish poet Adam Zagajewski speaks at 6 p.m., in the Colloquium Room, Boston University Photonics Center, 8 St. Mary’s St.

TUESDAY: Dominic Green reads from ‘‘Three Empires on the Nile,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ..... David Shrayer-Petrov and Maxim Shrayer discuss ‘‘Autumn in Yalta,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop, Cambridge. ..... Lionel Shriver reads from ‘‘The Post-Birthday World,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville. ..... Ellen Cooney reads from ‘‘A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store. ..... Anita Diamant discusses ‘‘Living a Jewish Life,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Hillel, 52 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge. ..... Michael Palmer reads from ‘‘The Fifth Vial,’’ at 7 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Boston University, Kenmore Square.

WEDNESDAY: Peter Ho Davies reads from ‘‘The Welsh Girl,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ..... Tom Bissell discusses ‘‘The Father of All Things,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store. ..... Sylvia Barack Fishman discusses ‘‘The Way Into the Varieties of Jewishness,’’ at 4 p.m., in the Shapiro Campus Center, Brandeis University, 415 South St., Waltham. ..... Ellen Cooney reads from ‘‘A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies,’’ at 7 p.m., at Borders, 255 Grossman Dr., Braintree. ..... Aryn Kyle reads from ‘‘The God of Animals,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith. ..... Poets Joshua Mehigan and Mildred Nash read at 7:30 p.m., at the Newburyport Art Association Gallery, 65 Water St., Newburyport.

THURSDAY: Anne Lamott reads from ‘‘Grace (Eventually),’’ at 7 p.m., at the Masonic Temple, 1950 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. ..... Jerome Groopman discusses ‘‘How Doctors Think,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith. ..... Alice Quinn (‘‘Edgar Allan Poe and the Juke Box’’) speaks at 7 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Emerson College, 114 Boylston St. ..... Mark Doty discusses ‘‘Dog Years,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store. ..... Brendan Halpin reads from ‘‘Dear Catastrophe Waitress,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books.

FRIDAY: Miranda Beverly-Whittemore reads from ‘‘Set Me Free,’’ at 7 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Boston University. ..... David Armitage discusses ‘‘The Declaration of Independence,’’ at 3 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store. ..... Mark Doty reads from ‘‘Dog Years,’’ at 7 p.m., at Jabberwocky Bookshop, 50 Water St., Newburyport.

SATURDAY: The Carpenter Poets read at 3:30 p.m., at the Eliot School, 24 Eliot St., Jamaica Plain.

Events are subject to change.

Riefenstahl and friend

Michiko Kakutani's review this morning of two new books about the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl reminded me of my own Globe review of her 1993 autobiography, "Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir," published when she was 91. A few sentences from it:

"Riefenstahl's career never recovered from her association with Hitler, nor does her book. The last 300 pages are a sad, fatiguing perils-of-Pauline chronicle of her attempts to clear her name of various slanders and her unsuccessful attempts to restart her film work. ...

"The book's cohesive tension comes from Riefenstahl's obtuseness to Hitler's infernal ideas and plans, which she managed to dissociate from the usually polite fellow who treated her like a piece of fine china. Though she was no Nazi and had Jewish friends (apparently they all went into exile), she never fully accepted the view that Hitler was, in Churchill's words, 'a bloodthirsty guttersnipe.' In 1976 she wrote to Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister, after his 'Spandau Diaries' were published, 'You have emphasized the negative aspects of his personality more strongly than the positive. A Hitler such as you describe could not possibly achieve unusual things, good or bad. . . . I too can never forget or forgive the terrible things that were done in Hitler's name.'

"But everything was done in his name. He was too squeamish to do it himself."

I asked below what readers thought about this question: Was it inappropriate or disingenuous to have a stronger feeling of revulsion about the bombing at the Baghdad book-market, in which at least 20 people were killed, than about other bombings? A reader writes:

"Is it disingenuous? I don't think it is; I think it's normal.

"When the Baghdad Museum was looted, people asked me why I was so upset and angry about the destruction. They didn't have my background in art history, so they couldn't understand how much work and love went into creating, displaying and preserving a collection. They simply couldn't take it personally enough to feel the same outrage.

"I believe it's a normal human response to feel stronger empathy for people who are 'like us.' The book lovers of Boston can more easily put themselves in the shoes of the book lovers of Baghdad, and that's when we all become horrified enough to feel their pain."

A small publisher in Oregon has hit the big time, the very big time, the Oregonian reports.

Beyond Words Publishing has has sold 3.75 million copies of "The Secret,'' a power-of-positive-thinking offering that Oprah has twice featured on her show. The 24-year-old publishing company has 12 employees -- and a partnership with Simon & Schuster.

Novelist John Banville is supposed to be one of the bad boys of literature: arrogant, self-absorbed, depressive, heavy-handed. To which I would answer after interviewing him on New England Cable News yesterday: I don't think so.

On the contrary, I found him funny, open, thoughtful, inclusive, and unafraid of making fun of himself (and there's the key) as well as others. But see what you think. Here's the link.

1. Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin.
2. Dreams From My Father
By Barack Obama. Three Rivers.
3. The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion. Vintage.
4. Istanbul
By Orhan Pamuk. Vintage.
5. The Tipping Point
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.
6. The Places in Between
By Rory Stewart. Harvest.
7. The Universe in a Single Atom
By the Dalai Lama. Morgan Road.
8. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
By Tucker Max. Citadel.
9. Three Cups of Tea
By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Penguin.
10. 2006/07 Boston Restaurants
Edited by Ruth Tobias. Zagat Survey.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Inheritance of Loss
By Kiran Desai. Grove.
2. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
By Kim Edwards. Penguin.
3. Man Gone Down
By Michael Thomas. Grove.
4. Black Swan Green
By David Mitchell. Random House.
5. The History of Love
By Nicole Krauss. Norton.
6. Love Walked In
By Marisa de los Santos. Plume.
7. March
By Geraldine Brooks. Penguin.
8. Judge and Jury
By James Patterson and Andrew Gross. Warner.
9. Saving Fish From Drowning
By Amy Tan. Ballantine.
10. Arthur and George
By Julian Barnes. Vintage.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Audacity of Hope
By Barack Obama. Crown.
2. In an Instant
By Lee and Bob Woodruff. Random House.
3. Women and Money
By Suze Orman. Spiegel & Grau.
4. A Long Way Gone
By Ishmael Baeh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
5. Freakonomics
By Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Morrow.
6. American Bloomsbury
By Susan Cheever. Simon & Schuster.
7. The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne. Beyond Words.
8. Infidel
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Free Press.
9. The Art of Aging
By Sherwin B. Nuland. Random House.
10. Beyond Basketball
By Mike Krzyzewski and James K. Spatola. Warner Business.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. Ten Days in the Hills
By Jane Smiley. Knopf.
2. What Is the What
By Dave Eggers. McSweeney’s.
3. Shopaholic and Baby
By Sophie Kinsella. Dial.
4. The Double Bind
By Chris Bohjalian. Shaye Areheart.
5. Step On a Crack
By James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Little, Brown.
6. Strangled
By Brian McGrory. Atria.
7. Dragon of the Red Dawn
By Mary Pope Osborne. Random House.
8. Plum Lovin’
By Janet Evanovich. St. Martin’s.
9. For One More Day
By Mitch Albom. Hyperion.
10. Forever in Blue
By Ann Brashares. Delacorte.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

After all the very serious book awards (see NBCC post below), my favorite book competition is The Oddest Book Title of the Year, sponsored by Thebookseller.com, the British online book-news magazine. Last year's memorable winner was, "People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It," by Gary Hill.

This year's shortlist, chosen from worldwide nominations, has just been announced, and you can vote for your favorite. Cast your vote here (scroll down to the right). The list:

"How Green Were the Nazis?" edited by Franz-Josef Bruggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller.
"D. Di Mascio's Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry: An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans," by Roger De Boer, Harvey Francis Pitcher, and Alan Wilkinson.
"The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification," by Julian Montague.
"Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan," by Robert Chenciner, Gabib Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magodmedkhanov, and Alex Binnie.
"Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium," edited by Robert J. Anderson, Juliet A. Brodie, Edvar Onsoyen, and Alan T. Critcheley.
"Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence," by David Benatar.

The National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced last night in New York. The all-volunteer organization of book reviewers and editors gave top honors to:

Fiction: Kiran Desai, for "The Inheritance of Loss."

General nonfiction: Simon Schama, for "Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution."

Biography: Julie Phillips, for "James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon."

Autobiography: Daniel Mendelsohn, for "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million."

Poetry: Troy Jollimore, for "Tom Thomson in Purgatory."

Criticism: Lawrence Weschler, for "Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences."

Not your typical stage performance and book party:

First off, Boston Globe staff writer Catherine Foster writes in her Stages column today about "Shay Duffin as Brendan Behan: Confessions of an Irish Rebel,'' playing at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway theater in Somerville through March 31. The one-may show about Behan, a poet, playwright, and novelist, was written by Duffin who has performed it close to 7,000 times. If you go, watch his feet. Behan's widow gave Duffin a pair of her late husband's shoes and Duffin will be wearing them. (Doug Holder, a poet and chronicler of the local arts scene, reports on his interview with Behan on his blog.)

Tomorrow, it will be Blonde-tinis all around at a launch party for Kristin Harmel's new chick-lit novel, "The Blonde Theory.'' It's the story of Harper Roberts, a successful, Harvard-educated patent attorney who feels she has lousy luck with dating because men are intimidated by her. At the urging of her friends, she goes on a series of blind dates acting like a ditz to test out the theory that men are more attracted to women without a brain. The plot, Harmel says, grew out of her own dating experiences.

Bacardi will be serving cocktails from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, March 10, at Queen Bee boutique on Newbury Street.

Compiled by Judith Maas

SUNDAY: Poets Meg Kearney, Kathleen Aguero, Jan Schreiber, and Richard Wollman read at 2 p.m., at Forsyth Chapel, Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Ave., Jamaica Plain.

MONDAY: John Banville reads from ‘‘Christine Falls,’’ at 6 p.m., at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge; tickets ($3) available at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., or by calling 617-661-1515. ..... Kevin Shay reads at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline. ..... Editors and contributors from small presses speak at 6 p.m., at Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston ($5). ..... Jacqueline Woodson reads at 10:30 a.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge.

TUESDAY: Nigel Hamilton speaks at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ..... Vijay Prashad discusses ‘‘The Darker Nations,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop, Cambridge. ..... Ishmael Beah reads from ‘‘A Long Way Gone,’’ at 6 p.m., at the Brattle Theatre; tickets ($3) available at the Harvard Book Store, or by calling 617-661-1515. ..... Michael Lowenthal discusses ‘‘Charity Girl,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Framingham Public Library, 49 Lexington St., Framingham. ..... David McGillivray talks at 7 p.m., at the Pratt Memorial Library, 35 Ripley Rd., Cohasset.

WEDNESDAY: David Valdes Greenwood reads at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ..... Julie Campoli and Alex MacLean speak at 4 p.m., at the Lincoln Institute, 113 Brattle St., Cambridge; register at www.lincolninst.edu. ..... Nina Shope reads at 7 p.m., at the Wellesley Free Library, 530 Washington St., Wellesley. ..... A celebration of W..H. Auden takes place at 6:30 p.m., at First Parish Church Meetinghouse, 3 Church St., Cambridge; tickets ($3) available at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, or call 617-661-1515.

THURSDAY: Bill Novak speaks at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ..... Anthony Weller reads from ‘‘First Into Nagasaki,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville. ..... Kurt Anderson reads at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith.

FRIDAY: Kurt Andersen reads from ‘‘Heyday,’’ at 7 p.m., at Jabberwocky Bookshop, 50 Water St., Newburyport. ..... Mark Kramer, Jim Collins, Jay Allison, and Emily Hiestand discuss ‘‘Telling True Stories,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store.

SATURDAY: Poets Marguerite Guzman Bouvard and Becky Thompson read at 3:45, at the Brockton Library, 304 Main St., Brockton.

Events are subject to change.

The blog called Galleycat, hosted by mediabistro.com, has a poll up today asking people where and how they heard about a book. It follows a story in the Wall Street Journal last week about the decline of the standalone newspaper book section, and the declining importance of reviews to book sales. Find the poll here (scroll down to March 7).

If you're an olde Bostonian, you get the reference in the title of this post. Email me the answer at mehegan@globe.com, and you win a year's free access to "Off the Shelf"! (OK, it's already free...)

Baghdad's Mutanabi Street book-market in happier times.

After my post Monday about the Baghdad book-market bombing, a reader writes:

"I dunno, is it me? I have heard from 3 or 4 booksellers who are appalled and dismayed at this bombing, and I can't wrap my head around why.

"People are getting killed every day in Iraq because of US involvement -- blown up in emergency rooms, hotels, unemployment agencies and hijacked out of office buildings and murdered -- haven't we lost 95+ journalists? What makes a bombing in a bookshop more tragic? Why is today more hideous than any other day? Wouldn't the loss of one child who would grow up to be a doctor more tragic than a burned-out bookstore? It seems disingenuous to show more grief today than yesterday or tomorrow."

I replied that the crime was unquestionably murder, that at least 20 people were killed in the bombing, that if none had died, there would be no interest, that in my opinion it was the combination of the evil deed and the location of it that affected some people. I for one had a stronger sense of revulsion at last week's bombing at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University, where many young women students were killed, than at earlier outrages in public places.

For the record, the bombing happened in an open-air book market, not a bookshop. Still, the reader may have a point. I'd like to hear from others about this. Is it disingenous to care more about this bombing than any others? Email me at mehegan@globe.com.

Union Square Press, an imprint of Sterling Publishing, which is owned by Barnes & Noble booksellers, announced it will publish an "instant book" about the Scooter Libby affair. Titled "The United States vs. I. Lewis Libby," the paperback book will hit stores in April with a first printing of 75,000 copies. The book, edited by National Journal writer Murray Waas, is expected to have original reporting, as well as a review of the trial record.

Is this a nutty idea? Even the paperback version of the Iraq Study Group report did not sell up to expectation, far less than the report of the 9/11 Commission. How many people want to read the transcripts of the Libby trial?

Perhaps a more interesting book on the case, described here, will apparently not appear "instantly," if at all. That's Valerie Plame's own account of her part in the story of how Administration officials leaked her position with the CIA to the press in an effort to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. She will have to get her manuscript past the CIA censors, who are reportedly balking.

It's not too late to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the birth on Feb. 21, 1907 of W.H. Auden. Harvard Book Store has an all-star lineup of poets for an evening of readings next Wednesday, the 14th, in Harvard Square (Tickets are $3.)

Get a headstart with one of Auden's most famous poems, "Lullaby,'' posted by my colleague David Mehegan.

When is a pop-up book too good for a kid?

When it's "Mega-Beasts," the third and final edition of the Encyclopedia Prehistorica series published by our own Candlewick Press in Cambridge.

This colorful cardboard extravaganza, created by Roberta Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart, contains 35 intricate dinosaur pop-ups, fold-out pages, and tab booklets, complete with detailed descriptions, in what was clearly a labor of love for authors and publisher alike.

But could you give this hands-on work of art to junior to yank on as he pleases? Let's just say you'll be repeatedly tempted to say: "Let daddy help you with that." In fairness, the cover suggests buying the title for children age 5 and above.

Perhaps we're all oversensitive, but a clever marketing campaign by a publisher last week set off at least a small alarm bell at The Mount, the Lenox home of novelist Edith Wharton, according to an item today in Publishers Weekly's online edition.

It seems Algonquin Books, promoting a new novel called "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers Homes in New England," by Brock Clarke, mailed a letter to book-review editors around the country addressed to a "Mr. Pulsifer," signed by one "Beatrice Hutchins" of Lenox, asking Pulsifer to "burn down Edith Wharton's house." Pulsifer and Hutchins are fictional characters.

The Boston Globe hasn't received this letter, but PW did, and called The Mount to ask about it. According to a story on publishersweekly.com by Rachel Deahl, Mount officials, who had heard about the letter, were sufficiently puzzled and curious to call the state police. When told by PW that it was a publicity stunt, Mount official Susan Wissler was much mollified, and even told PW that the home would be interested in having the author pay a visit.

Two other letters evidently are in the mail, one of which mentions the burning down of Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst. The galley of the September book is to follow later. An Algonquin spokesman said the letters are "clearly fictitious and written in an over-the-top, playful manner -- and refer to events that never happened." One thing happened, though -- the book got a mention in PW and in "Off the Shelf."

It’s no joke. On April 1, Ben Fountain will receive the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished first book of fiction, “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.’’ Fountain quit his law practice in 1988 and spent the next 17 years writing a failed novel and the stories that became his first book.
Patrick Hemingway, the son of writer Ernest Hemingway, will present the $8,000 prize. Edward P. Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Known World,’’ will be the keynote speaker at the ceremony at 3 p.m. at the JFK Library in Dorchester.
K.C. Frederick’s novel, “Inland,’’ Louise Gluck’s book of poems, “Averno,’’ and Sebastian Junger’s nonfiction narrative, “A Death in Belmont,’’ will receive the 2007 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Awards celebrating New England authors and settings.

Poet Todd Hearon was my favorite of four emerging writers featured at PEN New England's annual Discovery evening tonight. I hope he finds a publisher -- and soon -- for his collection of poetry. One poem imagined a monologue by Harry Farr, one of 306 British soldiers shot for desertion or cowardice during World War I. Farr was executed by a firing squad in 1916 after he refused to return to the trenches. Another, published in Slate magazine, riffed on "man is a weapon of mass destruction.'' Hearon, who teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy, knows how to keep it light, too. He called the following poem a "found " poem because many of the facts in it come from the Findings section in Harper's magazine.

LAST LOOK

The ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica are melting
but the Neolithic Briton had a one-in-fourteen chance

of having his head bashed in. What do you do
with the mass grave of dodos discovered on Mauritius?

With the family of retarded people walking on all fours
they found in Turkey? Either you get up or you don't

and scientists insist we're still evolving. A recent
study of bats found that males with big brains have

small testicles. Holocaust survivors are more prone
to die from cancer. Even guppies go through menopause, the rhesus

monkey drinks more when it drinks alone. Homesickness
is on the rise in Canada. A pair of drunken moose

attacked a Swedish old folks' home. So what they did
in Guantanamo was astonishing but not

more than Taiwan's transgenic pigs that glow
in the dark-as, apparently, so do we-or the toxic

waste in the Arctic turning hungry polar bears
hermaphroditic. It's extreme, but the gene

experts conjecture we're only about ten percent
human, the rest of our cells bacteria. The red

rains that fell mysteriously over India
back in 2001, no one knows what they were.

Astronomers posit small clusters of galaxies
near Andromeda are floating on a river of dark

matter and postulate Pluto to be much
colder than Charon, its moon. We're not alone:

dolphins use names and songbirds
grammar. The male Nigerian putty-nosed

monkey makes the sentence pyow hack hack pyow
hack hack to indicate it's time to be moving on.

A London bookshop in 1940

Murder is murder, no matter where it occurs, but the bombing today in Baghdad's book market has a particular resonance. At least 20 people were killed when the bomb went off near a printer's office. Firefighters have had difficulty extinguishing the fire that followed, because the books and papers make such efficient fuel. The marketplace is said to be a historic center for Baghdad intellectuals.

It is as if someone thought, "While we're taking human life, let us also take something that makes human life different from other life: knowledge, art, the imagination, memory of the past." This is what the Northmen did in pillaged monastaries of ninth- century Ireland and England: burned and destroyed the books. One wonders how many copies of the Koran were incinerated in this attack.

It reminded me of the famous photograph, above, of a London bookshop the day after a bombing during the blitz of 1940. Will the booklovers of Baghdad all be killed or driven out, or will their need for learning draw them back, like these unknown figures, to the ruined stacks?

Wystan Hugh Auden
1907-1973

I'm chagrined to discover that I missed W.H. Auden's 100th birthday, which was Ash Wednesday, Feb. 21. In respect to him, here is one of his most famous poems. Others (including one read by him), can be found here, linked from the W.H. Auden Society.

Lullaby

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

(From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House. Copyright © 1940 W. H. Auden, renewed by The Estate of W. H. Auden.)

Two free-speech groups yesterday criticized a decision by a Michigan U.S attorney to refer to the FBI for investigation allegations that several books used in local schools are obscene. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the National Coalition Against Censorship called the referral by Stephen J. Murphy "absolutely bizarre."

A group of parents in Howell last month demanded that the school board remove the books, including Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," and Richard Wright's "Black Boy." The board rejected the demand, and the parents group, Livingston Organization for Values in Education, or LOVE, filed a complaint with the Livingston County district attorney, the U.S. attorney, and the attorney general of Michigan, charging that the books are obscene and violate child pornography and child sex abuse laws.

The two organizations last month signed a letter to the Howell school board defending the literary merit of the books.

Granta has come up with its list of the Best Young American Novelists and guess what? The British literary magazine has changed the meaning of "young.'' For the 1996 list, the age cut-off was 40. This year it's 35.

I see some familiar names among the 21 novelists in the special issue due out this month -- Daniel Alarcon, whose "Lost City Radio,'' is fabulous; Anthony Doerr, whose writing about science books I enjoy in his occasional column for the Globe; and Uzodinma Iweala, whose "Beasts of No Nation'' is a searing tale told by a child soldier. Kevin Brockmeier's "The Brief History of the Dead,'' which has just come out in paperback, is on my nightstand.

What's fun is exploring the work of writers whose names are new to me. A handful of the novelists will be appearing at the Harvard Co-op on April 26. I hope to be there.

This is the time of year when book awards are rolling out. Among recent announcements, one celebrating the short story, the other better living.

The Story Prize ($20,000 and an engraved silver bowl) went to Mary Gordon for "The Stories of Mary Gordon.'' The other short story collections that were finalists: "The Lives of Rocks'' by Rick Bass and "In Persausion Nation'' by George Saunders.

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society's Books for a Better Life include "What to Eat'' by Marion Nestle and the memoir, "A Three Dog Life'' by Abigail Thomas.

James Patterson

I groused below that awards for American fiction-writers are paltry, compared to Irish and English prizes, but my frame of reference needed to be enlarged. For example, thriller author James Patterson announces tomorrow this year's winners of his PageTurner Awards, which honor groups or individuals for salutary activities that encourage reading.

The winners, according to a story by the AP's Hillel Italie, include Vermont librarian Pam Shelton, who set up a book project in Botswana, and an organization called First Book, which distributes books to low-income American families. The top prize of $100,000 will go to the Washington Center for the Book, based in Seattle, which conceived of the "One City, One Book" program that has swept the country.

Funded by Patterson, who reportedly sold 12 million books last year, PageTurner awards will go to 39 winners, for a total of $500,000. Patterson said he intends to give away as much as 60 percent of his earnings to PageTurner winners.

1. Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin.
2. The Measure of a Man
By Sidney Poitier. HarperSanFrancisco.
3. Dreams From My Father
By Barack Obama. Three Rivers.
4. The Places in Between
By Rory Stewart. Harvest.
5. The Tipping Point
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.
6. The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion. Vintage.
7. Three Cups of Tea
By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Penguin.
8. Rat Bastards
By John ‘‘Red’’ Shea. HarperCollins.
9. The Power of Now
By Eckhart Tolle. New World Library.
10. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
By Tucker Max. Citadel.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Inheritance of Loss
By Kiran Desai. Grove.
2. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
By Kim Edwards. Penguin.
3. Arthur and George
By Julian Barnes. Vintage.
4. The Kite Runner
By Khaled Hosseini. Riverhead.
5. The History of Love
By Nicole Krauss. Norton.
6. Love Walked In
By Marisa de los Santos. Plume.
7. March
By Geraldine Brooks. Penguin.
8. Salem Falls
By Jodi Picoult. Washington Square.
9. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
By Lisa See. Random House.
10. Unshapely Things
By Mark Del Franco. Ace.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Audacity of Hope
By Barack Obama. Crown.
2. The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne. Beyond Words.
3. About Alice
By Calvin Trillin. Random House.
4. The Intellectual Devotional
By David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim. Rodale.
5. A Long Way Gone
By Ishmael Baeh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
6. The No A——— Rule
By Robert I. Sutton. Warner Business.
7. You on a Diet
By Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz. Free Press.
8. I Feel Bad About My Neck
By Nora Ephron. Knopf.
9. American Bloomsbury
By Susan Cheever. Simon & Schuster.
10. Born on a Blue Day
By Daniel Tammet. Free Press.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. What Is the What
By Dave Eggers. McSweeney’s.
2. Step On a Crack
By James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Little, Brown.
3. Innocent in Death
By J.D. Robb. Putnam.
4. For One More Day
By Mitch Albom. Hyperion.
5. High Profile
By Robert B. Parker. Putnam.
6. Heart-Shaped Box
By Joe Hill. Morrow.
7. Strangled
By Brian McGrory. Atria.
8. The Emperor’s Children
By Claire Messud. Knopf.
9. Ten Days in the Hills
By Jane Smiley. Knopf.
10. The Double Bind
By Chris Bohjalian. Shaye Areheart.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

Today is World Book Day in the U.K., and Ireland (and also my name day, St. David's. My late mother always used to tell me I'm supposed to wear a leek in my hat today. I'm not wearing a hat. Perhaps I should tuck it behind my ear). In honor of the day, on its 10th anniversary, the organizers did an online poll of the 10 books "the nation cannot live without." The results:

1) "Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austen
2) "Lord of the Rings," by J.R.R. Tolkein
3) "Jane Eyre," by Charlotte Bronte
4) "Harry Potter" books, by J. K. Rowling
5) "To Kill A Mockingbird," by Harper Lee
6) "The Bible"
7) "Wuthering Heights," by Emily Bronte
8) "1984," by George Orwell, tied with "His Dark Materials," by Philip Pullman
10) "Great Expectations," by Charles Dickens

Who knew that Harper Lee's novel was so popular in that part of the world? Though I can't find it on the worldbookday site, the Guardian also reports the top 100 listed by poll respondents. It includes everything from Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" and Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones's Diary" to Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" and the complete works of William Shakespeare.