Having trouble organizing my thoughts today. I suppose it might just be that the weather switches back and forth almost hourly it seems. One hour it’s warm, the next it’s raining and cold. Here are a few things that have kept my mind busy today:

• Salman Rushdie was crushed when Padma Lakshmi left him and almost didn’t finish writing The Enchantress of Florence, according to this interview in the Guardian.
• I agree with David Mehegan that author bios are getting a little too cutesy.
  

  Since time out of mind, biographical sketches of authors have appeared on the inside back flap of book jackets: what they have written, what they have done, marital status and number of kids, where they live. In recent years, I have noticed the exceedingly odd custom of including, and enumerating, pets and animals.

• This article on the big box stores vs. small independents doesn’t say anything that new, but it’s still worth reading.
• I should say something important about Harper Collins new, big bright publishing plan, but I can’t muster up anything to say right now. I’ll believe it when I see it work.

The Pulitzers were announced today. Junot Diaz picked up the Fiction award for The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Mao, one of my favorite books of last year. Newsweek has a nice interview with the author in which he discusses the burden of expectation and at the end says some accurate things about the current political climate:

With that caveat aside, we’re in the fifth year of the most expensive war in human history. We’re devouring an entire generation of our young people, both directly in the war or with the long-term consequences, and yet the country wants to get obsessed with immigration. Like this is the exact right time to have this conversation? I wonder if we’re not trying to distract ourselves. You know, I love that image from “Moby Dick,” because we’re like the ship. We’re the Pequod. We’re this nation on this ship, and we’re on this insane quest being directed by a madman. But what’s really interesting is that Captain Ahab wasn’t taking his foreign workers and making them walk the plank. He understood the value of diversity through his dream. We’re even crazier than Ahab. We’re chasing this white whale called terrorism, but our captain is saying, “You know what, I don’t think some of us really belong here. They should walk the plank.” I never thought there would be a day where the United States would be crazier than its metaphor, the Pequod. But we’re there. We’re there. Ahab is now a moderate.

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.