Inside Jacket

So much for rainy-day books: LG Display débuts a solar-powered e-book reader.

Granta names John Freeman editor.

A physicist donates his Shakespeare collection to U.C.L.A., including a book by Montaigne that introduced the Bard to such valuable words as: “adulterous,” “miraculous,” “depraved,” and “scandalous.”

John Irving attacks teachers unions, Al Gore, and a seventy-pound porcupine.

The “Going Rogue” cover photos Sarah Palin rejected look a lot like the one she chose.

Soft Skull Press defends its forthcoming English translation of French Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand’s risqué memoir.

Who needs Google when you can digitize your own books?

Britons buy more books than Americans, but fewer mysteries or romance novels.

A new history of César Chávez portrays him as a charismatic leader and fierce guardian of his own power.

The Frankfurt Book Fair opens this week amidst allegations of censorship for “de-programming” two Chinese dissidents.

Is Dan Brown scared of the Freemasons?

Dustin “Screech Powers” Diamond’s memoir “Behind the Bell” shares more with “For Whom the Bell Tolls” than you might think.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposes Google’s digital-library plan.

Is reading Thomas Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice” the same as playing the video game “Grand Theft Auto”?

Shakespeare’s Iago is the prototype for the modern liar in all its forms: “the deceitful politician, clergyman, athlete or entertainer; the conniving money manager; the prevaricating realtor; the online sexual predator.”

The Times devotes its Sunday crossword puzzle to authors’ last names.

Is a self-help author criminally responsible when his advice kills people?

Is magical realism bad for children? An anti-prostitution group delays the film production of Gabriel García Márquez’s “My Melancholy Whores,” citing pedophilia concerns.

Amazon cuts domestic Kindle prices ahead of its worldwide launch, on October 19th.

The photographer Ian Shive’s new book, “The National Parks: Our American Landscape,” is the result of more than four years spent tramping through beautiful places.

Americans identify “whatever” as the most annoying expression in contemporary language.

The Harvard Lampoon will release a Twilight parody in November, full of gems like this: “He was muscular, like a man who could pin you up against the wall as easily as a poster, yet lean, like a man who would rather cradle you in his arms.”

Suburban Chicago librarians look to join the Teamsters following a town’s budget cuts.

Upon hearing the news that Gourmet was folding, Ruth Reichl locked up the mag’s cookbook and recipe collection, which stretches back seventy years. “That’s not going to disappear,” she said.

This year’s Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog features the Algonquin Roundtable Experience—dinner with ten literary giants (both Ephrons included) for only two hundred thousand dollars.

Hilary Mantel will spend her Booker Prize money wisely, on “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.”

Harvard will house the John Updike archive—three hundred and eighty linear feet of suburban malaise.

A book club reads “East of Eden,” turns it into a modern-dance sensation.

Zondervan, the religious imprint of HarperCollins, had planned a special Christian edition of “Going Rogue,” but ran out of time.

Will there be a Huff-bump for Carl Honore’s “In Praise of Slowness”?

The Federal Trade Commission’s new endorsement guidelines hold print book reviews and books blogs to different standards.

Germans probably won’t be reading”The Lost Symbol”—over seventy per cent say they don’t consult best-seller lists.

Pearls of wisdom from Kanye’s new self-help book: “Believe in your Flyness…Conquer your Shyness.”

When it comes to polymaths, is it possible that George Foreman has more skills than Oliver Sacks?

When editors and agents sit down for the requisite lunch date, things rarely go as planned.

“Your job as Vice President is to be someone other than yourself. You mute your own ideas, you defer your own agenda, you become the nation’s most prominent executive assistant…All of which, of course, is opposite to your job as a memoirist.”