Inside Jacket

“There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book”: Patti Smith upon winning the National Book Award for non-fiction.

And the other winners: Jaimy Gordon, Kathryn Erskine, and Terrance Hayes.

How Cynthia Ozick exorcized Henry James.

What happens when an antiquarian bookstore receives eight ounces of marijuana in the mail?

The best and worst literary puns.

Decoded: Jay-Z talks to Terry Gross about his earliest rhymes.

Mark Peters on the many meanings of “gay”: is the word off-limits?

For some struggling writers, the lucrative video game industry beckons.

“Did John Irving ever have to do this?” Tawni O’Dell on posing as a wood nymph and other indignities in the life of the serious female novelist.

Where do your books go when you die?

Virgin America will add e-books to its in-flight entertainment system.

“Electricity, security and the economy”: on the challenges of owning a bookstore in Iraq.

Robert McCrum on the threat of digitization and free books: “Words that get written for money are likely to be superior to words spun out for nothing, on a whim.”

The chief executive of the British Library asks, “Should a world-class library preserve Stephen Fry’s tweets?”

The Huffington Post’s list of the best iPhone apps for “word junkies.”

The museum described in the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk’s novel “The Museum of Innocence” has been made into a real institution in Istanbul.

The key to good note-taking? A pen that records sounds as you write.

Nicholas Sparks on tearjerkers, North Carolina, and why he doesn’t write about adultery.

Is Danica McKellar sending teen-age girls the wrong message with her “smart and sexy” math books?

No one threw eggs this time, but Tony Blair faced taunts of “liar” while discussing his memoir with Katie Couric at the 92nd Street Y Tuesday night.

Forget Amazon: author Jon Papernick is peddling his newest book via pushcart in Boston, New York, and Portland, Maine.

Ottawa’s oldest independent bookstore will close its doors at the end of the month.

Laura Miller looks to Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” to shed light on the current “anti-Muslim panic” over the Park51 Islamic culture center.

The British Library has acquired a collection of Ted Hughes’s unpublished poems and letters.

On a mission to fight wrongful murder convictions, John Grisham praises North Carolina’s Innocence Commission.

Songs on iTunes go for ninety-nine cents each. Should essays be sold the same way?

Philip Womack tells President Obama to “leave the prose to the pros.”

Then owner of the only secular Yiddish bookstore in New York is “praying for a white knight” to save it.

The PEN American Center issues a statement in support of the proposed Park51 Community Center: “We emphatically reject the tyranny of fear.”

Eight minus Kate: Jon Gosselin is writing a parenting book with leadership coach Dr. Sylvia Lafair.

Salon on guerrilla-style online marketing and why Tao Lin is the “next big thing in urban hipster lit.”

Virginia State University business students will pay a flat fee of just twenty dollars for access to the digital textbooks for eight courses, thanks to a new deal with Flatworld Knowledge.

Roland Haas, whose memoir “Past Tense: My Secret Life as a CIA Assassin” was thought by some to be a fabrication, died Saturday after accidentally shooting himself with a handgun.

Women are not “marshmallow peeps,” says NPR’s Linda Holmes, so enough about “chick lit.”

Retail property owners worry that they will be left with vacancies if Barnes & Noble decides to close some of its stores.

Can the perfect author photo really increase book sales?

This isn’t New York City’s first hot summer. Ed Kohn, author of “Hot Time in the Old Town,” talks about the 1896 heat wave that killed 1,500 New Yorkers.

Fairmont Hotels has partnered with Random House and Kobo to lend e-readers to luxury hotel guests.

McNally Jackson Books will introduce an Espresso Book Machine, a device that can print and bind a new book in minutes, to its New York City store.

Are public readings an essential part of every writer’s job?

American remaindered book shows continue to draw bargain-hunting booksellers from overseas.

An author named John Savage is suing the British comedian Ricky Gervais, saying he stole his ideas when he wrote the “Flanimals” series of children’s books.