1. Vanity Fair has a great article on John Hughes in the current issue. He wrote in a notebook everyday - his sons have found over 300 notebooks in the house since his death. How it ended:

More comforting still, James says, is that, “when he passed away, he was doing something he loved. He was out note-taking and observing”—even if the notes were mental and photographic rather than pen-to-paper. The point is: John Hughes never stopped writing until his heart stopped beating.

I don't write enough and thinking more about it right now, I don't think I ever have. That needs to change.

2. More on Rebecca Skloot and Henrietta Lacks in the current issue of Smithsonian - and also be sure to read her piece in PW a few months ago about organizing a book tour by yourself and why touring still matters (and how to do it most effectively):

Readers and writers crave personal connections with each other. The online world allows that in wonderful ways, but it doesn’t replace face time. Perhaps this is especially true for writers like me. Many readers are convinced that all science writing is boring. When they hear about my book, their eyes glaze (great, a book about cells). But when I start telling the story of those cells—one of the most important tools in medicine, taken from a poor black woman without her knowledge, bought and sold by the millions while her family struggled to afford health insurance—that gets their attention. And their attention means more than book sales: I spent a decade digging this story out from dusty basements, archives, and memories, because I believe it’s an important one that needs to get out to the world.

3. This piece on international graphic novels has many books I look forward to reading and makes me wonder how I missed them in the first place.

4. Peek into the mind and method of author Zachary Mason - whose Lost Books of the Odyssey has gotten some very fine reviews. (I'm not so much into the Odyssey itself but this book sounds quite intriguing and reminiscent of Thomas Wharton who I adore.) Plus the notion of "a calculus of writing" is just flat out appealing in ways I can't quite describe as I failed miserably with math in school but mix it with writing and then it gets very cool.

5. Nick Flynn's new memoir written in the wake of Abu Ghraib, The Ticking is the Bomb, sounds very cool and I've added it to my Powell's wishlist. A bit of the mini review from VF:

His search for the meaning of fatherhood in the era of terror is remarkable not only for the nimbleness with which he pulls these threads together - observations of former prisoners are woven with meditations on loss - but also for its empathy and unshrinking honesty. It's a declaration that the ticking of the bomb can also be the beating of the heart.

So many good books - so little time.