I agree with Ron; Oprah officially jumped the shark for me yesterday when she suggested that since everyone else had moved past the OJ Simpson trial, the Goldmans should find some peace as well. How in the heck she found similarity between those of us who watched it on tv and the poor family who had a loved one get murdered in the most violent way possible, I will never understand. I don't know what that woman was thinking and her insistence that they were only getting 17 cents a book was equally bizarre. Does she not check facts or what? (And the poor Goldmans looked like they didn't even know how to explain that figure because it made no sense to them either.)

According to her page at Harvard, Samantha Power is definitely working on a biography of UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed in a 2003 bombing in Iraq with 23 other UN employees. The odd thing is that while the book appears to have an ISBN number at some sites (and a possible title: "The Man For Dark Times"), it is not listed over at Penguin as due out in early 2008. Power's first book, A Problem From Hell, was amazing and disturbing and intense and absolutely brilliant. I'm really interested in this next book but have no clue just when it will appear (or from who). I'll have to do some checking....

For fans of Robin McKinley, Jenny D. has read her upcoming book, Dragonhaven:I think it will be fairly polarizing--the more animal-oriented of McKinley's fans will surely love it (there's some great stuff in here, esp. if you're interested in state parks and wilderness preserves and zoo-keeping!), the more romance- and fairy-tale-oriented ones maybe not so much.

This explains a lot:

Failure does not exist for Bush. His advisers know that well. One tells Draper that bearing bad news to the president is like walking in the valley of the shadow of death. And so they don't. They don't bring him bad news. And he is left in a parallel universe in which his leadership will prevail. It will all come right in the end.

It sounds like the President and Britney have a lot in common; I wondered if he watched the VMAs?

I am fascinated by abandoned buildings and this exhibition and book about Jane Jacobs sounds outstanding. I just added The Death and Life of American Cities to my Powells list - I don't know why I don't already own this book. (Link via Maud who also points out the upcoming Decomposition Series from Furnace Press - five more books I will eventually need to buy.)

My editor at Booklist, the splenderific Donna Seaman, interviews authors all the time for her Chicago radio show. Those Open Books Radio interviews are now available to download at her spiffy new site. I defy you not to find someone fascinating over there. Donna is one of the most well read people I have ever met and an absolute joy to work with. Check out her site and I promise you will not be disappointed.

And finally, the crew at Chin Music Press have started up a couple of new sites, one focusing on Tokyo and the second on New York City. They are looking for writers who have something to say about these two locations. Here is what Hitotoki is all about:

As people travel through an environment that is new or foreign to them, they often develop brief, intimate and intense memories that combine their emotions, experience and sense of place. This can happen spontaneously and in places that are taken for granted or overlooked by regular commuters. The end result is a private, internal map of a city. Our goal is to illuminate these personal mappings into a greater whole through short narratives tied to and describing these spacial/emotional relationships. As the number of narratives increases, one hope for the site is that it will become an alternative resource for looking at Tokyo.

They are still looking for contributors in particular for the new NYC site launch. Check out the splash page and then let them know if you have something to say.

And finally, Cherie Priest with the sort of geeky writerly type information that I love hearing about. How do you include Daniel Boone in a story when no one seems to agree on who the man really was? I can't wait to see what she ends up doing with all this.

[Pic via Forgotten NY - an appropriately Autumn picture of a Bronx cemetery. Most of my mother's family is resting - long forgotten - in cemeteries all over that borough.]