More things happened than I have links to, but here’s the skinny on the fat:

1. WeBook.com, a great collaborative writing tool or user-generated book writing tool, got a $5M deal led by Vertex and Greylock Partners.

2. Crab Whisperer: James’ exploit hand-catching crabs is caught in VanMag. (Ok, not book related but publishing related.)

3. Stowe Boyd has a great list of the tools he uses. I’m there baby! (Yup, also not book related but Stowe is awesome.)

4. ATM for books: Print on Demand. “Angus & Robertson today became the first Australian book chain to install the Espresso Book Machine (EBM), capable of printing, trimming and binding a paperback book on demand within minutes.”

5. BookNet Canada and the Association of Book Publishers of BC ran a full day session on internet marketing for book publishers. I presented on understanding and measuring results and will post those notes over the weekend.

Harcourt continues to publish some of my favourite children’s books. In fact I would happily read any of their teen and young adult titles, especially anything by Ursula K. LeGuin (who’s coming to the Vancouver writers’ festival) and Kristin Cashore.

Kristin Cashore is the author of Graceling, a fantastic first novel about a land of seven kingdoms where only a few people are born graced. A Grace is an extreme skill, i.e., Martha Stewart would be graced with domesticity, Usain Bolt graced with speed. Of course there are graces that are frowned upon: killing being one.

Katsa is a Lady in the Kingdom of Randa, and she is graced with killing. Which makes King Randa pleased. He can be a brute to his citizens and neighbours. Katsa must do his bidding. That is until Prince Po comes along. He is graced with fighting (or so it first appears) and he reveals to Katsa that her skill is really survival.

Graceling is a fantasy books in the same vein as Ursula K. LeGuin’s Gift trilogy. I recommend it for the fast pace, adventure and solid writing.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore is published by Harcourt Books.

I’m ready to read anything by Chuck Klosterman. So far Downtown Owl is my favourite book of 2008.

Klosterman’s sense of place in the novel Downtown Owl is spot on. In Canadian terms, he’s the comedian that Sinclair Ross wasn’t.

Sharp, witty, observant: I can’t say enough about Klosterman’s depiction of the town of Owl, North Dakota, and 4 of its inhabitants. Everyone knows everyone but they don’t know their inner thoughts, hopes and fears:

* Mitch, the football kid who doesn’t fit in.
* Julie, the new meat woman in town who has everyone’s attention (men at the bar anyway).
* John Laidlaw and his young girl vices.
* Horace–widower.

Horace is by far the only 1 of the 4 who deserves his end.

The stories are short stories that are inter-connected to form the novel. It is a novel rather than short stories but really any chapter could stand on its own. I’m particularly fond of a chapter in the middle of the book, “November 23, 1983” (page 129). It starts:

Quote: Edgar Camaro was Satan. Or at least an idiot. Or at least he was when he rolled dice, or at least that’s how it seemed to Horace.

Horace had two secrets. One of them was dark and sinister, as most noteworthy secrets tend to be. The second was less awful but more embarrassing, which is why it became the secret he despised more.

This particular chapter is a masterpiece and I really wish I could share it with you hear, but I’ve asked and no such luck. You can, of course, have a look at this chapter on Mitch.

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman is published by Scribner (S&S) and you absolutely should read it.

Welcome to Nicholas, or rather welcome back Nicholas. Nicholas is the energetic French schoolboy who is forever in some kind of trouble. His exploits are brought to life by Rene Goscinny, the author of Asterix. The series was originally published in France in 1959 and is now available in a gorgeous hardcover edition by Phaidon.

The cover looks like it’s covered in cloth or linen and Nicholas is set into the cover. The interior sketches are also really cool.

The Nicholas series published by Phaidon. The short stories are a bit predictable but funny nonetheless.I like Photograph to Treasure in which the boys are so misbehaved the class photographer has left by the time they’ve settled down to have the picture taken. Or Playing Cowboys in which Dad gets tied to the tree and then forgotten. Or Playing with √áuthbert, who everyone really just wants to punch in the nose.