GQ and Farrar, Straus & Giroux are teaming up to produce The Originals Series; events that will pair writers and musicians for conversations in “an intimate West Village loft space.” The series will debut next Tuesday with John Jeremiah Sullivan and the Brooklyn band Cavemen, and will be hosted by David Rees. Last we checked, only eight tickets were left.

HarperCollins is buying religious publishing imprint Thomas Nelson, which according to the press release, is "the world’s leading provider of Bibles [and] inspirational books."

In the Rumpus, Stephen Elliott rips into the first sentence of

Literary agent and onetime editor of Grove Press Ira Silverberg is leaving his position at Sterling Lord Literistic—where he represented authors such as Sam Lipsyte, Adam Haslett, Rene Steinke, and Neil Strauss—to become the new director of literature for the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Wall Street Journal debuts its e-book bestseller list, which—surprise, surprise—looks just like regular old print bestseller lists. Nicholas Sparks, Bill O’Reilly and James Patterson rank high on both.

E-readers actually get heavier—by about a molecule—with each new virtual book added.

The first book

Despite the exhortations of marquee writers and the Cooper Union community, the St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York will not get the rent break it had been petitioning for, Publishers Weekly reports. "They'd like to rent the space for twice what we're paying," said St. Mark’s co-owner Bob Contant. "They're going to have to answer to the community for the decision they made. We're extremely disappointed."

‘Twitterologists’ claim that the microblogging service can gauge the ebbs and flows of global moods; Maud Newton parses Twitter regional slang.

Books They Gave Me: A (Tim O’Brien inspired?) Tumblr

On Tuesday, NYU hosted a panel discussion titled “From the Publishers’ Perspective” that featured Dutton’s Brian Tart, HarperMedia’s Ana Maria Allessi, and FSG’s Sarah Crichton. As PW points out, one of the major themes was uncertainty. According to Tart, “You learn to fail really quickly.”

H&M is launching a new clothing line based on the fictional stylings of Lisbeth Salander, the anarcho-hacker heroine from Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.

We were thrilled to see the lineup of authors who will be at Page Turner 2011, the third annual Asian American Literary Festival, which will take

In the wake of news that Bibles are among the most frequently downloaded Apps, the New Yorker’s Book Bench blog contacted heads of several New York City religious institutions to ask how the digital age is transforming worship.

The Baffler has just signed a $500,000 deal with MIT Press guaranteeing three issues a year for the next five years. Surveying the deal, the Observer catches a new name on the masthead: twenty-four-year-old hacker Aaron Schwartz, who made headlines this summer for leaking four million JSTOR articles.

Legendary book designer Chip Kidd, most recently known for designing

Triple Canopy excerpts artist David Wojnarowicz’s journals: “May 7th spent the afternoon developing photos—most in the Rimbaud series—others from the ‘shoot-from-hip’ series—excited about them, they’re fine images semi-ghostly bald men in leather eating in restaurants faces whirling with darkness reflected in opposite mirrors… four o’clock rolls around—½ hour till the meeting—I finished up in the darkroom I rent on Prince Street from some old walrus ex-ship captain fella who has tons of shots of Mexico on the studio walls. A real grumpy fart. Paid him his fee and split to a nearby Cafeteria

Triple Canopy excerpts artist David Wojnarowicz’s journals: “May 7th spent the afternoon developing photos—most in the Rimbaud series—others from the ‘shoot-from-hip’ series—excited about them, they’re fine images semi-ghostly bald men in leather eating in restaurants faces whirling with darkness reflected in opposite mirrors… four o’clock rolls around—½ hour till the meeting—I finished up in the darkroom I rent on Prince Street from some old walrus ex-ship captain fella who has tons of shots of Mexico on the studio walls. A real grumpy fart. Paid him his fee and split to a nearby Cafeteria

Jeffrey Eugenides's vest (you know, the one on the Times Square billboard) now has its own Twitter account.

Roland Emmerich's new film Anonymous promises to irritate English professors everywhere by suggesting that Shakespeare wasn't really Shakespeare.

Forbes magazine names Chinua Achebe "Africa's most influential celebrity."

The New Yorker excerpts part of It Chooses You, Miranda July's forthcoming book about "adventures" she's had with strangers met through local classified ads.

Underworked scientists prove that there are relatively few health risks associated with reading on the toilet.

Steve Jobs’s authorized biography comes out today. Among the highlights, Jobs wanted to revolutionize the $8-billion-a-year textbook industry by giving textbooks away for free with iPads; he declared “thermonuclear war” against Google for copying iPhone features in its Android phone; and he regretted waiting to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer.

In an echo of the Juan Williams affair, NPR has fired freelancer Lisa Simeone for her involvement with the Occupy Washington D.C. movement. Simeone hosts the World of Opera program, and works for the show Soundprint, both of which are produced

With a little help from their friends at Random House, Politico is launching an online bookstore that will carry a curated selection of books on politics, history, current events and biography.

HBO is adapting Karen Russell’s Florida-set novel Swamplandia! into a miniseries.

Here’s a 21-minute video of Michael Winslow recounting the history of the typewriter—by imitating the evolution of their sounds.

Simon & Schuster’s author portal now lets its writers see their all their sales data, broken down by format.

Now that his journals are out, read Spalding Gray’s 1986 interview with BOMB.

This Saturday at apexart, join John Haskell, Patrick McGrath, Elissa Shappell, Eileen Myles, Dale Peck and Lynne Tillman for "Mad as Hell," "an afternoon of rants, raves, and diatribes" organized by Bookforum editor Albert Mobilio.

The ranting goes from 2-5 and will held at 291 Church Street.

“I hit on the first sentence while walking,” Hisham Matar tells Hari Kunzru about his second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance. “And it’s, ‘There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest.’ I kept repeating the sentence in my head and thought, okay, this is a sentence that has in it the music, the DNA, the logic of this character in this book and I will let the sentence write the next sentence and so on.” In the new issue of Guernica, Kunzru and Matar talk about the book, the revolution in Libya, and living under repressive regimes.

n+1 is launching a