I’ve got to get our calendar orders done today, so no lengthy tirades about anything. Usually we meander through the calendar catalogs, spending time picking the absolute best Monet wall calendar (trust me when I say that there are many many Monet calendars out there), but due to some unforeseen circumstances, I’ve got to get them done by tomorrow. And I’m working on them alone for the first time ever. So if you come into the store and wonder who the hell ordered these lousy calendars, that’s me. Meanwhile, here’s some stuff to occupy your free moments:

• Margaret Howe at Bookslut has put together a list of all the magazine articles available online which were nominated for the National Magazine Awards. I was very interested in Peter Hessler’s article for National Geographic on China’s rapid growth:
  

  But Wenzhou had the priceless capital of native instinct. Families opened tiny workshops, often with fewer than a dozen workers, and they produced simple goods. Over time, workshops blossomed into full-scale factories, and Wenzhou came to dominate certain low-tech industries. Today, one-quarter of all shoes bought in China come from Wenzhou. The city makes 70 percent of the world’s cigarette lighters. Over 90 percent of Wenzhou’s economy is private.

• Here’s the new issue of Boldtype: #54 Sounds.
  
• Robert Birnbaum speaks with well-known book designer and author Chip Kidd.
  
• In honor of April being National Poetry Month, FSG has started up their poetry blog again this year.
  
• Yuval Levin discovers a disturbing sales pitch in the press release of a subsidiary of Amazon.com.
• The Tournament of Books is over. Two books enter, one book left. I love Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. On a side note, I once knew a guy who said he would marry the girl who could answer the question, “Who run Bartertown?” Surprisingly, I heard he got married last year.