In The Guardian Stuart Kelly thinks all the Scottish cheer-leading and patting-themselves-on-back is getting to be a bit much.

The New Yorker leaps into the literary weblog fray with the promising-looking The Book Bench.

In The Times Megan Walsh and Caroline White have assembled The 30 best books festivals in the British Isles: the definitive 2008 guide -- and it really is pretty useful.

In Chasing the printed word in The Age Jane Sullivan finds that: Australian literature is a strange market. You can't buy new copies of some of our most revered and loved books for love or money: they are as rare

BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize-judge Claire Armitstead wonders Just how many books should you read to judge an award ?, wondering: So is the call-in system actually worth the extra work it generates ?

Russian author Yuri Rytkheu has passed away; see, for example, Victor Sonkin's piece in The Moscow Times, Yury Rytkheu, an author from Chukotka, has died in St Petersburg. Archipelago have brought out his A Dream in Polar Fog, with The