I’ve got an assortment of links here:

• The Fourth Annual New York Round Table Writers’ Conference will be on Friday April 11th and Saturday April 12th. The line up looks great–Charles Bock, Alice Hoffman, Joshua Ferris just to name a few.
• Also the PEN World Voices conference will be from April 20th to May 4th. This year’s theme is Public Lives/Private Lives. The list of participants is outstanding. I’m very excited about Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, and Mario Vargas Llosa reuniting on stage. I’d pay money to see that.
• Speaking of Salman Rushdie, he’ll be appearing at my store this summer, on Monday July 14th. We’ve got some great folks coming in the next few months: Richard Price on April 17th, Tony Horowitz on May 5th, Armistead Maupin on May 30th, David Sedaris on June 6th, Lewis Black on June 7th.
• Terry Teachout discusses The Ten Cent Plague by David Hajdu over at Commentary magazine. My store is also hosting an event with him next week at the Brattle Theater.
• Great interview with Jon Banville in the Village Voice. Have I gushed yet over Silver Swan, the second of Benjamin Black’s books? It’s even better than his first book.
• John Freeman, flip flopper. Last year he loved book reviews, the world was getting enough. Now he’s off them. Book reviews are like fad diets. They’re the carbs of our book world perhaps?
• Finally, I leave you with the 7 deadly words of book reviewing: poignant, compelling, intriguing, eschew, craft, muse, and lyrical. I’m sure I’m guilty of using all of these. I mused long and hard on crafting the perfect compelling sentence about eschewing the use of these poignant words.