A Financial Times writer says that Salman Rushdie's novel is good, so good in fact, that he may have to try it with curry.

Quoted: For Rushdie, as for the artists he writes about, the pen is a magician’s wand. There is more magic than realism in this latest novel. But it is, I think, one of his best. If The Enchantress of Florence doesn’t win this year’s Man Booker I’ll curry my proof copy and eat it.

Flurb, a webmag containing astonishing tales from some of the top sci-fi/fantasy writers out there. Put together by Rudy Rucker.

This sounds like an interesting book about reading, speculating that the act itself is one of improvisation and that it changes the brain in positive ways.

Quoted: Reading, says Wolf, changed history. More than that, it changes the brain. It creates new pathways in the brain, and, by doing this, makes us think in new ways. When you read, you see letters written on a page, then you recognise them as representations of sounds made by the human voice, then you join the sounds together to make words, then you fit the words together into sentences.

Michael's Chabon's "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" has become the first book ever to be nominated for the Nebula, Edgar, and the Hugo awards.

I love how the only full sized statue of Dickens was made by the Americans as a present to the British, and that that present had to be sent back to to respect Dickens's wishes.

Quoted: Seeking an appropriate means of marking the 200th anniversary of his birth, several of Dickens' descendants have come out in support of a commemorative statue at Eastgate House, Rochester, Kent, a building that appears in many of his novels, including The Pickwick Papers.

What is this world coming to? Nobody at Woolworths has heard of Lolita?

Quoted: An online campaign by a group of mothers has forced Woolworths to withdraw a line of bedroom furniture for girls called 'Lolita'.

I love the idea. Famous writer gives short story messages in a bottle. The recipient has the option to bash the story out of there or leave it as it is.

Quoted: So this is cool: Michael Swanwick, who has published both a new novel (The Dragons of Babel) and a new collection of short stories (The Dog Said Bow-Wow) in the last four months, unwinds by writing short-shorts, sealing them in a bottle, then destroying every other copy or draft of the novel that exists on paper or hard drive. And then he gives it away—"usually to a charity auction or such, but sometimes to a friend," he explains. "The owner of the bottle, whoever he or she is, can either read the story or else possess the object—but cannot do both."

A detailed look at the creation of characters in various writing styles.

Quoted: From Jane Eyre to Jean Brodie, David Copperfield to David Brent, whether solidly realised or lightly sketched, fictional figures can be as vivid to us as real people. But just what, exactly, is a character, asks James Wood