Amazon Daily

New York Times:

• Sunday Book Review cover: Leah Hager Cohen on Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich: "An introductory note that accompanied early copies of the novel declared that Erdrich wrote this book 'straight on,' as 'a single, gripping narrative,' and it does have a headlong quality.... But what to make of the publisher’s claim, which isn’t intrinsically positive? To be sure, in places, 'Shadow Tag' seems more like notes for a novel than fully realized fiction.... Elsewhere, though, Erdrich’s unbridled urgency yields startlingly original phrasing ('the christbirthing pinecone air') as well as flashes of blinding lucidity.... It’s a fool’s errand to parse fact from fiction. Even given such glaring similarities, to acknowledge them in a review would seem prurient, loathsome — if Erdrich hadn’t seeded her narrative with what feels like an imperative to do so."
• Maslin on The Postmistress by Sarah Blake: "Out of these clumsy beginnings, Sarah Blake has coaxed forth a book that hits hard and pushes buttons expertly. Not for nothing does its publisher emphasize the resemblance between 'The Postmistress' and 'The Help,' Kathryn Stockett’s socially conscious pulp best seller. Each of these novels appropriates galvanizing social issues in the service of a well-wrought tear-jerker. And each is crammed with talking points."
• Kakutani on Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett: "In 'Union Atlantic' an immensely talented young writer attempts to write a big, splashy novel with Tom Wolfeian ambitions — a novel set mainly in the early years of this millennium and flirting with issues like Wall Street corruption and class warfare. The result is a lumpy, disappointing book: at times, gripping and keenly observed, but more often strangely implausible and contrived."
• Will Blythe on Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolaño: "The evil in 'Monsieur Pain' feels ominously real, despite the fact that Bolaño hardly enunciates its presence. The novel melds existential anxiety to political terror in a measure peculiar to Bolaño — imagine the protagonist of Poe’s 'Tell-Tale Heart' if he were being interrogated by the secret police on suspicion of having hidden subversives behind his wall. Readers know, as the characters of 'Monsieur Pain' do not, that Paris in 1938 is a city of sleepwalkers, that a darkness soon comes its way. It is Bolaño’s great gift to make us feel the dimensions of this darkness even when we cannot see exactly what it hides."
• Geoff Dyer on Point Omega by Don DeLillo: "The good bits in 'Point Omega' keep reminding you of older good bits that turn out also to be better bits.... He has reconfigured things, or our perception of them, to such an extent that DeLillo is now implied in the things themselves. While photographers and filmmakers routinely remake the world in their images of it, this is something only a few novelists (Hemingway was one) ever manage. Like Hemingway, DeLillo has imprinted his syntax on reality and — such is the blow-back reward of the Omega Point Scheme for Stylistic Distinction — become a hostage to the habit of 'gyrate exaggerations' (the phrase is in 'The Body Artist') and the signature patterns of 'demolished logic.'"
• Elena Lappin on A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova: "'A Mountain of Crumbs' (which takes its title from a game Gorokhova’s grandmother invented during a famine in the 1920s) could be taught as a master class in memoir writing: the key is not to collect facts and recollections but to truthfully re­imagine one’s life.... Gorokhova writes about her life with a novelist’s gift for threading motives around the heart of a story, following its plot with a light touch and unwavering honesty. Each chapter distills a new revelation in poetic prose — about herself, about her family, about her teachers, friends and lovers."

Washington Post:

• Charles on Erdrich's Shadow Tag: "Louise Erdrich's new novel is a tense little masterpiece of marital strife that recalls her tragic relationship with the poet Michael Dorris. Gossips will trace the story's parallels to the author's life, but for all its voyeuristic temptations, 'Shadow Tag' is no roman à clef, no act of spousal revenge on her estranged husband, who committed suicide in 1997. Instead, Erdrich has done what so many writers can't or won't do in this age of self-exposure: transform her own wrenching experience into a captivating work of fiction that says far more about the universal tragedy of spoiled love than it reveals about her private life."
• Marie Arana on Eight White Nights by Andre Aciman: "She is baffling, impulsive and surpassingly strange. But, then again, so is he. What follows is a mating dance that will either entrance or repel you -- a collision of two eccentric souls that grows with mesmerizing intensity. This is a richly intellectual novel that will resemble nothing you've ever encountered. Despite its nods to Dostoyevsky and Rohmer, and for all the references to well-worn landmarks of a familiar city, it is an original to the core."
• Daniel Gross on On the Brink by Henry M. Paulson: "His first-person account of the epic financial collapse is just that -- straightforward and direct. Shorn of anonymous, unsourced dish, it nonetheless offers plenty of excellent color and detail.... The main problem with this fast-paced book was the main problem with Paulson's tenure -- a surprising inability to see the big picture. And as tough as he is on congressional Republicans, Paulson lets some people off much too easy.... Given that Paulson knew this culture from the inside, it's disappointing that he doesn't reflect more on Wall Street's pathological need for compensation, on its pathetic leadership and corporate governance."

Los Angeles Times:

• Wendy Smith on Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization by Steven Solomon: "Ranging across several millenniums and dozens of cultures, Solomon offers thought-provoking material on nearly every page, leavening the abundant facts and figures with a judicious sprinkling of colorful anecdotes. His ambitious thematic framework, though, inevitably leads to some oversimplification and a touch of monomania.... Compared to the richness of his canvas and the acuity of his insights, however, these are small faults. 'Water' enlarges our understanding of how this vital element has shaped our past, providing enough evidence of humanity's ingenuity in the face of its challenges to offer reasonable hope that we will find ways to use it sanely."
• Daniel Mallory on The Information Officer by Mark Mills: "So begins Mark Mills' "The Information Officer," a novel so triumphantly old-fashioned, so double-upholstered with the stuff of classics, it reads like the story of 'Casablanca' revisited, like a vanished Graham Greene.... Though this utterly ravishing third novel seethes with femmes fatale and double agents, it most strikingly evokes Greene's colonial stories, especially 'The Heart of the Matter,' set in Sierra Leone, and the Saigon saga 'The Quiet American.' ... This is a magnificent entertainment, at once stiff-upper-lipped and moist-eyed, sober yet irreverent."

Globe and Mail:

• Jessica Warner on Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline: "If there is little to admire in Hergé the man, there is a great deal to admire in Hergé the biography, starting with its even-handed treatment of a difficult and badly behaved artist. A seasoned biographer, Assouline neither spares nor demonizes Hergé.... The result is a sophisticated and revealing study of a man and his times."
• Kevin Chong on Invisible by Paul Auster: "While this socio-political critiquing adds a new wrinkle to Auster's fiction, it also reveals its limitations. The logomaniacal novelist-detectives of those novels, whose quests have a logic and narrative pull even as they withdraw further into themselves, feel lightweight when taken out of their hermetically sealed literary mazes and placed more squarely in a world of terrorism and religious fanaticism."

The Guardian:

• Christopher Tayler on The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis: "Around 250 pages in, however, as Keith's inept scheming builds to a catastrophe, the writing seems to relax a bit, collapsing the absurdly high diction into low comedy in more effective ways.... Amis jettisons the lumberingly intricate, glassily poised manner of the earlier sections, working up instead a kind of narrative fugue state not seen in his work for some time. Although not every­thing succeeds here, you get the feeling of a writer working at high pressure with combustibly personal material, scarcely bothering to disguise various real-life figures – his sister, Hitchens, the poet Ian Hamilton. It's as though, having previously played only grace notes, he's launched into a tune."
• Alex Clark on The Long Song by Andrea Levy: "Levy's use of a delightfully fallible narrator is clever and productive, although at times it can also seem strained and show a tendency towards the schematic. In this sense, she is herself the victim of July's story, which gallops along, full of humour and incident, linguistically fleet of foot and by turns illuminating and heartbreaking. As a document of the end of slavery, The Long Song proclaims its own incompleteness and partiality; but as a story of suffering, indomitability and perseverance, it is thoroughly captivating."

The New Yorker:

• James Wood on The Privileges by Jonathan Dee and Haslett's Union Atlantic: "This kind of ventriloquism allows for savage satire, because ['The Privileges'] is effectively one long skein of unreliable narration; the reader is forced to pick a desolate path through a wilderness that thinks itself a garden. Dee seems to sympathize with his characters, but at every moment is subtly undermining them.... Haslett is a curious writer, who, despite the prizes and citations that were showered on his first book, still seems uncertain, and variable—often eloquent, but sometimes flowery, and sometimes workmanlike. He is timely, but a bit tweedy.... 'The Privileges' is the abler novel, but 'Union Atlantic' is the more likable."

Bookforum:

• Mary Gaitskill on Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugrešić: "Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugrešić is on the simplest level about the adventures of four old hags, plus their families and friends, adventures seen through the palimpsest narration of ur-witch Baba Yaga—the greatest hag of 'em all. I don't use the word hag impudently here. The author not only invites the term; in this strange and wonderful book, she owns it."
• Daphne Merkin on The Hypochondriacs by Brian Dillon: "At the heart of this thought-provoking and gracefully written book is a meditation on the lengths to which we go in order to exert control in a world governed by arbitrary conventions and restrictions, thereby gaining access to our desires and obtaining relief from our fears..... Behind this anxiety lurks nothing less than the specter of death, of course, and in their grappling with this morbid reality, Gould and Warhol—and indeed all nine 'tormented lives' that unfold here—seem, paradoxically enough, more courageous than the comfortably embodied among us could ever hope to be."
• Graeme Wood on The Routes of Man by Ted Conover: "Like Paul Theroux, who in The Great Railway Bazaar sought trains and found passengers, Conover seeks roads and finds drivers. These must be some of the most pitiful people on earth. Many have pointed out that the grinding poverty of crowded African cities will be the fate of millions in the next decades, but Conover's portraits suggest that the logistical nomads who connect these cities have a fortune even worse than those people trapped inside them.... Far from resembling one winding road through the featureless slum of the future, the routes Conover describes feel like an extended, colorful, frequently awful market stretching to forever, sometimes cold and sometimes steaming, always with dangers that put travelers far beyond the protection of any seat belt."

There are plenty of recipe-sharing sites out there. I frequently browse for inspiration on All Recipes, Epicurious and Foodista. But there's a new player swinging through cyberspace that streamlines the menu planning process.

Kitchen Monki was launched last year by Sam Kinney,  a software entrepreneur who has been involved in other startups. He also likes to cook, especially with his kids, and noticed there seems to be an insatiable hunger for food-related info. So, he cooked up a formula designed to integrate the menu planning, shopping and cooking process.

Got a bunch of chicken in the fridge and want to try something new? Type in chicken breast and a list of reader-submitted recipes appear. But, here's the really cool part: If you add the recipe to your queue, there's the option to create a custom shopping list from what you're planning on cooking. That list can be sent to your mobile device, which makes it even slicker. The footprint of some supermarkets is programmed into the shopping option, organizing your list, so you don't waste any steps.

Now, if you could only get the program to put away your groceries...

The recipe data base is still on the skinny side compared to those listed above. And you'll find some downright kooky selections as you scroll through. Beef jerky brittle, anyone?

But I've selected several recipes to add to my to-do queue and will revisit often. The Monki sends out Tweets when something new is added. (The content providers on the site need to do a better job of staying on top of the Monki blog or unplug it. The last entry was in early January.)

For cooks adept at creating their own dishes, Kitchen Monki offers the opportunity to shine. The uber-users are frequently featured and those cooks who have added loads of recipes are granted special status. Anyone who shares can then turn around and add it to their Facebook profile. That's some tasty social networking.

--Leslie Kelly

Well, Nikon just took a major stab at making its users happy with the 24mm f/1.4 and the 16-35mm f/4 VR, both lenses made to fit full-frame cameras (but will of course work on DX models).

How big is this? These aren't merely updates with new technology: The last time Nikon made a 24mm f/1.4 was … never. There has never before been a general-purpose Nikon lens faster than f/2.8 and wider then 28mm. Ever.

And the last consumer-aimed constant f/4 Nikon zoom (not counting the exotic 200-400)? I'm going to go with the 70-210mm, released in 1986.

Of course, the question that remains to be seen is "Are these any good?" and "Are these a sign of future Nikon lenses that more people have been asking for, like a 35mm f/1.4, 70-200mm f/4 or 300mm f/4 VR?" The short answer is "Who knows?" But we can take a good guess until I test both models. They both feature nano crystal coating, and while you could put that coating on a poorly designed lens, all such Nikon lenses released so far have been exceptionally sharp and contrasty. The 24mm prime focuses down to 25 centimeters, which isn't bad for such a fast lens. The real trick will be to see how accurately it autofocuses, particularly at distance -- this can sometimes be a trick for wide, fast lenses because you're mixing limited depth of field with big frames of view, getting lots of different junk in front of AF sensors.

Another question is how useful VR will be in a lens that goes as wide as 16mm, and thus doesn't need very fast shutter speeds to begin with. Of course you can turn it off, but that will keep the street price from being too low. Of course, this sample Nikon photo, taken without a tripod at a 1.5 second exposure, shows that there may be some value.

I will test both of these as soon as they are available. I have been using the Sigma 24mm f/1.8 — a very good lens as long as you have a camera with focus micro-adjust to fix Sigma's poor quality-control — and it will be interesting to see how they stack up.

Of course, you pay for all this, and it ain't cheap. The 24mm f/1.4 clocks in at $2199, and the 16-35mm f/4 VR is $1259.

The Book Behind Brad's Beard:USA Today reveals the "inspiration" behind Brad Pitt's grizzled goatee. Apparently, his facial hair has something to do with the film adaptation of David Grann's bestseller The Lost City of Z. Only his barber knows for sure. 

Neil Gaiman on the Small Screen: The Guardian UK reports that the bestselling fantasy author will write an episode of Doctor Who, the BBC's hugely popular sci-fi series. 

Taylor Prize for Nonfiction Announced: Author and journalist Ian Brown has won the 2009 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction for The Boy in the Moon, a touching account of Brown's relationship with his profoundly disabled son. The finalistis for this top Canadian literary award included John English's Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000, Daniel Poliquin's René Lévesque, and Kenneth Whyte's  The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst. 

Moving & Shaking: Shutterbugs are snapping up Rob Sheppard's show-and-tell image editing guide, Photoshop Elements 8: Top 100 Simplified Tips and Tricks, which landed the #2 spot on the Movers and Shakers list this morning. 

--Lauren

In a few days, the wait is over for fans of Stile Antico, the phenomenal vocal ensemble who specialize in Tudor and Renaissance choral music (and high-profile side projects with Sting.)  They release "Media Vita," a selection of works by the sixteenth century composer John Sheppard. 

Less well-known than Thomas Tallis, Sheppard's fame has spread slowly, because his compositions only made it to the twentieth century in manuscript form and many of them are incomplete.  What survives bears all the hallmarks of greatness.  This recording provides ample evidence of his bold, rich and individual harmony, as well as an inspired knack for compositional passion, while still adhering to Archbishop Cranmer's protestant tastes for concise word setting.

The performance captured here is at the same lofty standard that Stile Antico's earlier recordings attained - almost perfect.  This group engages the listener like no other, with the purpose of soloists, the tonal evenness of an ensemble, and with a clarity that is ground-breaking.  On a few listenings, though, this perfection is itself the disc's undoing.  I don't expect my thoughts to be received well, but I'm left willing the performance to move me more than it does.

If I'm honest, I miss children in this music.   Children don't sing as well as the sopranos in Stile Antico, plain and simple.  They are slavishly subservient to the choir director in front of them, the absence of which is one of the inspired features of this group.  They also think about football while they sing and who might get the carol service solo instead of them, but when they get it right, for me, there is an experience beyond the finesse on this album.

If you doubt me, and live within a reasonable distance of New York, duck into St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, during a sung service and judge for yourself.  Profound utterances, from the young, barely conscious of what they say, has a power that was understood by Britten, Walton, Boyce, Greene, Purcell, by all the great composers of liturgical choral music, all the way back to Sheppard.  In the hands of a child, these notes and words come from a different sphere, literally.  A sphere that the rest of us have had to leave behind. -- Hugo Munday

I wonder if the Colts will be noshing on beignets and sipping Cafe Du Monde coffee Monday morning, or if they'll be filling up on Wheaties?

I stuck to my promise and watched foreign films and painted my toenails in lieu of watching the Game. But I did get to thinking about New Orleans, which I was fortunate enough to visit just prior to Hurricane Katrina. One morning before my conference started, I ambled down Conti Street to Decatur, where lies the legendary grande dame of doughnuts, Cafe Du Monde . Now, Cafe Du Monde is the In-N-Out of beignets. The menu is sparse: just beignets, coffee (blended with chicory), milk and orange juice. But a steaming cup o' cafe au lait, and a plate of piping hot beignets doused with powdered sugar will easily tide you over 'til lunch...or dinner.

Mmm. If only they delivered.

--StellaCadente*

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OK, I'm not really that much of a football fan. But I do love New Orleans, so I'll be watching the Big Game.

I've traveled to loads of places in the world and I cannot think of another city that gets so fired up about food. There's a super-funky song by Kermit Ruffins called "What is New Orleans?" that really captures the flavor of that special city. He starts out with red beans and rice on Monday, fried pork chops with macaroni on a Wednesday night and goes down the list of dishes emblematic of the city's Creole and Cajun roots.

Last summer, I spent a week eating myself silly in New Orleans, savoring meals at classic spots such as Galatoire's and being blown away by new places: Still thinking about the deconstructed Oysters Rockefeller at MiLa and the exuberant seasonings of every single bite at Cochon.

My last lunch in NOLA before taking off was at Parkway Bakery and Tavern, which serves one of the city's best old-school po'boys. (Not to mention a killer Bloody Mary.) I'm going to do my darnedest to try and recreate the fried shrimp po-boy to munch while cheering on the New Orleans Saints! Dredging wild Gulf shrimp in Louisiana Seasoned Fish Fry and deep-frying 'em.

The tricky part was finding the right bread. I asked a friend who lives in the Crescent City if she had a recipe for the soft French bread rolls that make the foundation for the signature sandwich and she said: Nope. But, she suggested I look for a Vietnamese bakery and I scored! The Anxuyen Bakery in SeaTac, Washington, makes rolls used for Bahn Mi, also known as Vietnamese po'boys.

Ask for that po'boy dressed at a restaurant down South and it'll come with shredded iceberg lettuce, sliced tomatoes and some kind of sauce. I'm making a remoulade spiked with Sriracha.

-- Leslie Kelly

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Watch an exclusive advance clip from the upcoming DC Universe animated movie, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, coming out on February 23 in numerous editions, including Amazon exclusive Blu-ray and two-disc DVD versions that include a Justice League lithograph. It's a battle between the alternate earth's Lex Luthor (who's a good guy) and Ultraman. See more in our DC Comics 75th Anniversary Store. --David

The mayors of the two Super Bowl cities often concoct a symbolic wager of the fruits of their hometowns, but what I'd love to see them bet instead would be a box of local books. A few days ago, I ran across (via American Fiction Notes) Chauncey Mabe's entertaining assessment of how Indiana's literary legacy stacks up against Louisiana's (since limiting it to Indianapolis vs. New Orleans would be a rout from the opening whistle). He makes a valiant case for the Hoosiers against the more lauded lineup from the Big Easy, noting that both Vonnegut and Dreiser called Indiana home, and he really does his homework to credit Indiana with everyone from Jean Shepherd and Phyllis Naylor (whom I associate with Maryland, if only because her son played in the junior high school band with me) to the creators of both Clifford and Garfield. But it's just tough to go up against the pound-for-pound quality of the writers who have hailed from and written about the Pelican State, from Kate Chopin, Walker Percy, and John Kennedy Toole to Tennessee Williams, Anne Rice, and Ernest Gaines.

Longtime Omni readers will not be surprised that I was led back to the state lineups we put together in the Books of the States series from a year or so ago. A refresher: we gave each state as many literary representatives as they had electoral votes (in these cases, 9 for Louisiana and 11 for Indiana). Novelist Peter Charles Melman guest-selected our Louisiana list, and Pete gutsily opted to include a few lesser-known discoveries over some of the tried-and-true classics (to the point of leaving off Percy's iconic debut, The Moviegoer, which was sort of like the Colts benching Peyton Manning for a half--hey, they'd never do that, right?). Meanwhile, Indiana pleasantly surprised me when I chose its 11, going beyond its big literary names with a fascinating mix of classics of journalism, sociology, and humor (and of course, sports fans, Bobby Knight). You'd still have to put your money on the saints to go marching in, but, as Mabe says, you might actually have a game worth watching.

So in case you'd rather spend your day reading tomorrow (or if the game turns into a blowout that's only worth keeping on for the ads), here are our suggested starting lineups:

Louisiana (see Pete's comments on his choices):

• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• Dancing After Hours by Andre Dubus
• Bloodline by Ernest J. Gaines
• The Civil War Diary of Clara Solomon by Clara Solomon
• Alligator Sue by Sharon Arms Doucet and Anne Wilsdorf
• A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
• All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

Indiana (see my full writeup):

• Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
• Sexual Behavior in the American Male and Sexual Behavior in the American Female by Alfred Kinsey
• Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd
• Brave Men by Ernie Pyle
• Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back by Thomas Geoghegan
• The Dillinger Days by John Toland
• Raintree County by Ross Lockridge
• A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
• The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy
• A Season on the Brink by John Feinstein

I am not going to lie. I had no idea the Big Game was tomorrow until I opened up my copy of New York magazine and the lovely photo (left), accompanying Joaquin Baca's Seven-Layer Dip recipe caught my eye. I thought I'd pass along the link to those readers who are gearing up for parties.

If you really want to wow your party guests, go the extra mile and make your own tortilla chips.  johnnynacho has posted precise instructions and recommendations on how to do this. (Plus, I really wanted to link to someone named johnnynacho!)

My Sunday plans include watching this movie and painting my toenails this lovely shade of Lollipop. What are you making for your festivities?

--StellaCadente*

A few weeks ago, at Clyde Common in Portland, my husband was served a rye Manhattan, and I became a convert.

What is it about rye that rocks my world, the way scotch and bourbon never could?

Our latest discovery is called "The Monk," the work of Jonathan Hudak of Seattle's Tilth. He told us how to make it ourselves, and now you can too.

Even if you don't typically make cocktails at home, why not give it a try. It's worth a shot.

The Monk

Ingredients:
2-1/4 ounces Sazerac Rye
3/4 ounce Benedictine
1/4 ounce Yellow Chartreuse
5 drops Fee Brothers Aromatic Bitters

Directions:
1. Stir ingredients with ice. Strain. Garnish with one square of lemon peel.

--Tracy Schneider

 
Kazu Kibuishi is the mastermind behind the Flight fantasy comics series and his own great fantasy adventure series, Amulet. Copper is less ambitious, even more oriented toward kids, and quite lovely all on its own. Basically, the comics contained herein are vignettes following the exploits of Copper and his dog Fred. Copper's always plunging into new experiences without a care while Fred's there to anchor him in reality. Sometimes they're jumping through a waterfall. Other times they're just trying to make a purchase at the local grocery store.

It's hard not to like Kibuishi's creations, even those in a minor key. Kids will love the visuals--from blimps with eyes to incredible clocks--and they'll also love Kibuishi's never cynical but also never sentimental approach to his two main characters. Personally, I love the way he draws mushrooms, rabbits, and frogs, so I had a great time reading this book on a rainy afternoon, curled up on the couch.

The book includes a short but interesting section on Kibuishi's process in creating Copper, including panels in various stages of completion. He also explains the differences between working on a longer storyline (Amulet) and a shorter one, Copper typically being no more than two or three pages.

Here are a few samples from the comic, which is also available online. The book's a great gift for any kid.

The smart money's on Governing Lethal Behaviour in Autonomous Robots: The highly anticipated longlist for the 2010 oddest book title prize (a contest conceived in 1978 on "a particularly dull day at the Frankfurt book fair") has been announced. Sleeper pick: Schoolgirl Milky Crisis.

Maybe they're trying to make it even more prestigious: The West Australian Government drops its $110,000(A) Australia-Asia Literary Award after one year. (via the Literary Saloon)

Recalling an era of savage readers: The Millions traces the origins and ponders the future of the deckle edge:

The deckle edge dates back to a time when you used to need a knife to read a book. Those rough edges simulate the look of pages that have been sliced open by the reader. The printing happened on large sheets of paper which were then folded into rectangles the size of the finished pages and bound. The reader then sliced open the folds.

Moving & shaking: Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire, David DeKok's account of a subterranean fire that transformed a Pennsylvania community into a ghost town, rises to #1 on our Movers & Shakers list this morning.

--Jon

So, I keep seeing these teaser commercials for Sunday's big game from car manufacturer Kia.  They feature a bunch of toys enjoying a night on the town, including Muno from the kids' show, "Yo Gabba Gabba" a sock monkey, a robot and something that looks kinda like the Hamburglar and Grimace combined, except hairier.  All will be revealed in the full-length commercial, scheduled to air in the 3rd quarter of the game.  In case you haven't seen any of the the teaser versions, enjoy this:

(By the way, the song is "How you Like Me Now?" by The Heavy.)  -- E. Christian Moore

Happy Friday. Photo and recipe courtesy of creative mom Amanda, who blogs at  iammommy. Amazing what one can do with twelve drops of gel-based food coloring and a little ingenuity.

--StellaCadente*

It occurred to me a while back that there's another "envelope" we take into account in our automotive purchasing decisions. Let's call it the "utility envelope." I've had some ideas about what "utility" is and how it affects car buying (and car design) bouncing around in my head for a while, and I'd like to try and set them down in HTML and see what the rest of you all think. I don't know how original my insights are, and I'm wide open to critique.

So let's have at it.

• Seating capacity -- Obviously, the more people you can fit comfortably in a vehicle, the more useful it is.
• Trunk space and cargo capacity -- The more stuff you can carry, the more useful the vehicle is.  Also, for most people in most circumstances, enclosed cargo space is more useful than an open bed.
• Towing capability -- A vehicle that can pull a trailer has a greater cargo capacity than one that can't.
• Bad weather and rough-road/off-road capability -- A vehicle that can handle snow, dirt roads, and open country can go more places than one that can't. In this context, all-wheel drive is more useful than two-wheel drive.
• Range -- The farther a vehicle can go, the more useful it is. We sort of touched on this in our recent discussions of internal combustion engines, electric cars, and the EV-1.
• Reliability and maintenance -- This is what they sometimes call a "threshold variable"--a vehicle has to have some minimum level of reliability, because a car that won't start has no utility at all. A vehicle that requires frequent, complex maintenance (scheduled or otherwise) is less useful than one that doesn't. (Insert British sports car joke here.) However, beyond some minimally-acceptable point, increases in reliability or decreases in maintenance requirements (e.g. 7,500-mile vs. 5,000-mile oil changes) don't have any real effect on the utility envelope calculation.
• Top speed -- In this context, it is a threshold variable. Freeways have a minimum speed requirement, usually 40 MPH; a vehicle that can't get up to 40 MPH is therefore restricted as to what roads it can legally travel on, and is less useful than one that is not so restricted.
• User-friendliness -- Again, something of a threshold variable. A vehicle that requires special skill to operate, or has some sort of unusual and inconvenient starting sequence (like the old Stanley Steamers, which took 10 minutes to "warm up" to operating pressure) or non-standard control layout, or really tricky driving dynamics, is at a utility disadvantage compared to, oh, say, a current-generation Honda Civic.

Now that we have our definition established, what can we say about the "utility envelope?" I'd suggest a reasonably self-evident corollary proposition: at the extremes, there's an inverse relationship between the performance envelope and the utility envelope. A supercar like the Lexus LFA or Bugatti Veyron or SSC Ultimate Aero, or even something relatively restrained like the Esprit or Testarossa, may have an epic performance envelope, but its utility envelope is barely big enough for two human beings and a laptop. On the other hand, ever seen a 0-60 time quoted for a Dodge Power Wagon?

Want to max out your utility envelope? Large seating capacity, large cargo capacity with easy access, stone-axe reliablity, capable of freeway speeds, utterly benign driving dynamics--well, look no further than what's parked at your local soccer field. As my colleague David Drucker once put it, "A Minivan is Better Than What You're Driving"--in utility-envelope terms, anyway.

So, what do you think? Am I leaving anything out, or should any of the elements of the definition be changed? Any other corollaries you can think of? Hit the comments box below and let me know.

Oh, one last thing. Always remember: no matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

--Cookie the Dog's Owner

Titanic's nearly 12-year reign as the all-time domestic box office champion fell today as Avatar, the other James Cameron pic, surpassed it with $603.8 million (Titanic's take was $600 million). Industry experts had seriously doubted any film would ever best that record because of the shortened window between theatrical and DVD, but Avatar's steeper ticket prices due to its 3D IMAX sales did the trick.

But it's still no Gone With the Wind. That's right; if you actually adjust for inflation, Avatar is only #21 on the all-time box office list, while Gone With the Wind, 70 years later, has still sold more movie tickets than any other film in history. Here's the real box-office champ list after adjusting for inflation: (data from boxofficemojo.com)

1. Gone With the Wind: $1,537,559,600

2. Star Wars: $1,355,490,100

3. The Sound of Music: $1,083,781,000

4. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: $1,079,511,500

5. The Ten Commandments: $996,910,000

6. Titanic: $976,712,20

7. Jaws: $974,679,800

8. Doctor Zhivago: $944,670,800

9. The Exorcist: $841,427,600

10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: $829,490,000

11. 101 Dalmatians: $760,370,300

12. The Empire Strikes Back: $747,154,600

13. Ben-Hur: $745,780,000

14. Return of the Jedi: $715,792,100

15. The Sting: $678,377,100

16. Raiders of the Lost Ark: $670,759,500

17. Jurassic Park: $656,026,500

18. The Graduate: $651,198,300

19. Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace: $645,524,400

20. Fantasia: $631,960,900

21. Avatar: $603,789,300

22. The Godfather: $600,600,700

23. Forrest Gump: $597,732,100

24. Mary Poppins: $594,963,600

25. The Lion King: $587,733,900

--Ellen