Dailies

Steve Martin will be receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

William T. Vollmann is one of the featured writers in the 2005 Best American Travel Writing.  Other authors include: William Least-Heat Moon, Ian Frazier, John McPhee, Simon Winchester, Tom Bissell, Madison Smartt Bell, Timothy Bascom, and Pam Houston.  (Thanks Gadling).

Reuters: “German publishers, keen to defend their copyrights as Internet search engines seek to put the world's literature online, aim to set up their own Web-based database allowing readers to browse, borrow or buy books.”  - Let the electronic fighting over the printed word begin.

AFP: “Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who risks a jail sentence for his remarks about the massacre of Armenians during the Ottoman empire, defended his political outspokenness as he received the German book trade's prestigious peace prize.”

Courtney Brummer on the growing popularity of bookclubs.

How Sue Monk Kidd dropped nursing and started writing: “I remember making an announcement to my husband that I was no longer going to be a nurse and I was going to begin to write,”