California Literary Review

Book returned to library 145 years overdue: $52,000 fine waived after book stolen during Civil War is given back to Virginia university [Guardian]

British thriller writers mount challenge to US ‘production line’: British thriller authors have joined forces to challenge what they are calling “the reign of the production-line American thriller writers” such as James Patterson, John Grisham and Dan Brown. [Guardian]

Lit Critics Who Peer Under the Covers: NOW that colleges have created gender-neutral housing and bathrooms, and gay couples can be married in Iowa and Connecticut, it may be hard to understand the uproar that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s work caused when it first appeared in the mid-1980s. [NYT]

Designers create places to curl up with a book: The architect and designer Claudio Colucci conceived a lounge sofa made from carbon fibre for the James Bond writer Ian Fleming. “I have always liked the fantasy element in design,” he said. “Too much function bores me. I thought of creating an amphibious car, but that already exists, so I designed a lounge-sofa for drinking champagne, for two, of course.” [Independent]

JG Ballard dies aged 78: The 78-year-old author, who was best known for the award-winning Empire of the Sun, a semi-autobiographical novel written in 1984, and his controversial novel, Crash, later adapted into film by David Cronenberg. [Guardian]

Scrolling Down the Ages: All the same, there’s a lot in the Roman literary world that seems quite familiar two millenniums later: money-­making booksellers, exploited and impoverished authors, celebrity book launches and career-making prizes. [NYT]

Kite Runner joins gay penguins on top 10 books Americans want banned: Khaled Hosseini has joined the illustrious ranks of Philip Pullman and the authors of a story about gay penguins, after his novel The Kite Runner became one of the books that inspired most complaints in America last year. [Guardian]

Book Of A Lifetime: Minotaur, By Tom Paulin: Minotaur: poetry and the nation state, Tom Paulin’s collection of critical essays, was published in 1992 at a significant and, for many, alienating moment in literary history. [Independent]