News Around the Net

Remember when I asked if anyone had a spare $20,000 around for Cormac McCarthy's non-functional (it doesn't work!) typewriter? Well, I was wrong. It turns out you needed more than ten times that much.

For so much talk about the best books of the decade, how about a little talk about the worst books of the decade? A surprising amount of hate for Ian McEwan. It's like he's the British Dan Brown and I had no idea. He wrote Atonement!

Read Herta Muller's Nobel Prize speech. Even in her speeches, she tells better stories than me. Sigh.

Literary magazine Opium is getting on the iPhone with its own app. If only all lit mags had enough money to get their own iPhone applications. The world would be better. And less bulky.

Speaking of technology, let the kindle-ization of short fiction begin. The Atlantic is going to offer short stories exclusively on Kindle. They will not be offered in print.

Bookseller Andy Ross writes about his experience during the Salman Rushdie affair in the late 1980s. Back when book selling could have made a good action movie.

Rick Moody, who recently twittered a short story, talks about online publishing.

The Millions has been posting their annual "A Year In Reading" series. You can also feel free to look through previous years' posts.