Blogger and Spin magazine writer John Sellers's GOLD SOUNDZ: One Man's Journey Into Indie-Rock Idiocy, a humorous first person account of the Guided By Voices farewell tour, and a look back at the influence that the band and other stalwarts of the indie genre have had on the author's life, to Geoff Kloske at Simon & Schuster, by Jud Laghi at ICM (NA).

Ron Hogan's THE STEWARDESS IS FLYING THE PLANE, a look at the cultural trends and personal stories behind the highs and lows of (mostly) American cinema in the 1970s, with at least 300 photos -- many never-before-seen in print -- and interviews with roughly a dozen of the people behind the decade's coolest films, to Karyn Gerhard at Bulfinch, in a nice deal, by Leslie Daniels at the Joy Harris Agency (NA).

Sarah "Ultragrrrl" Lewitinn's THE POCKET DJ: The Best Songs for your Digital Life, a song and music compendium, with tips on downloading, MP3 Players, becoming a DJ, and the essential music one must have, to Tricia Boczkowski at Simon & Schuster Spotlight, in a nice deal, by James Fitzgerald at the James Fitzgerald Agency (world, excl. Spanish language).

Creator of Engrish.com Steve Caires' DO YOU FEEL ENJOY!!: TODAY'S MODERN ENGRISH, exploring the joyful cult of Engrish: the surreal displaced English which appears on Japanese product design, signs and slogans, to Amanda Patten at Touchstone Fireside, by Rupert Heath at the Rupert Heath Literary Agency (US).

Stacy Quarty's FRANKLY PREGNANT: The Reality Journal of Pregnancy, A humorous diary-cum-how-to book for moms-to-be, based on the author's popular web site of the same name, to Sheila Curry Oakes at St. Martin's, in a nice deal, by Linda Konner at Linda Konner Literary Agency (NA).

Author of MISDEMEANOR MAN and appellate lawyer Dylan Schaffer's "true law story" TROUBLE about an African-American man wrongly convicted of murdering an Ivy-league crack prostitute in 1991 ... to Colin Dickerman at Bloomsbury, by Lydia Wills at Paradigm (world). I know this isn't the detail I'm meant to linger on, but I have to ask: did the "Ivy-league crack prostitute" graduate from the Ivy League or simply service it? Or is the phrasing meant as an indication of quality, as in "she gives brain like an Ivy Leaguer"?

In every batch of new book deals, there's always one needlessly defensive book title. For example: Camilla de La Bedoyere's NO ONE LOVED GORILLAS MORE: Dian Fossey -- Letters from the Mist, the full story of Dian Fossey's life with the mountain gorillas of Africa, told through her own previously unpublished letters, to Kevin Mulroy at National Geographic, in a nice deal, by Palazzo Editions (US).

And, likewise, there's almost always a memoir apologizing for the author's wrongdoings while exploiting them. GC calls it the "I'm Sorry, But $$$" genre. Ken Walton's FAKE! Forgery, Lies, and eBay Or, How I Learned to Commit Art Fraud which Sparked an International Scandal that Rocked the eBay Universe, in which the author traces how he went from being a relatively normal middle-class kid with a young law practice to being on the front page of the New York Times at the center of an international scandal, revealing the vagaries of the art world, the seduction of eBay selling, and the tricks of his mind that allowed him to rationalize his growing fraudulent behavior, to Tricia Boczkowski at Simon and Schuster Spotlight, by Eileen Cope at Lowenstein-Yost (NA).

Let's make this clear: A political cause doesn't redeem a bad title, especially one suggesting anthropomorphic vaginas. Playwright Eve Ensler and photographer Joyce Tenneson's VAGINA WARRIORS, featuring portraits of women, including celebrities like Glenn Close, Salma Hayek, Gloria Steinem and others, active in Ensler's V-Day campaign, an annual event to end violence against women and girls, to Jill Cohen at Bulfinch, by Charlotte Sheedy for Ensler (world).

Ana Maria Shua's DEATH AS A SIDE EFFECT, a futuristic novel set in a world hiding aging, told in the voice of a make-up artist who smuggles his father into a refuge for non-conforming elders ... to Irene Vilar at the University of Wisconsin Press, in a nice deal, by Julie Popkin at the Popkin Literary Agency (world English).Futuristic? Sounds like present-day Los Angeles. And the "refuges for non-conforming elders" = nursing homes. Next?.

Accents are a big challenge. Mr. Brick got coaching for the invented language of a futuristic tribe in "Dune" and the variety of Sicilian dialect phrases in "The Godfather Returns," the mafia novel by Mark Winegardner that hits stores next week. When it came to doing a convincing French accent to win the chance to record the mega-selling "Da Vinci Code," Mr. Brick lost the job to a competitor named Paul Michael. Mr. Brick has since taken French lessons.

The day of the recording session last month, Mr. Brick was working at the Books on Tape studios in Woodland Hills, Calif., where the company -- a division of Random House Audio Publishing Group -- produces most of its inventory. Dressed in jeans and a soft gray sweater (less rustling), he was reading a portion of "Cloud Atlas," a densely worded novel by David Mitchell. Since each chapter is written in a different voice -- from a 1930s composer to the survivor of a distant apocalypse -- the producers had taken the unusual step of hiring six audio actors for the job. Mr. Brick's assignment for the day: navigating the journal of a fictional 19th-century American notary sailing the South Seas, whose prose is sprinkled with Polynesian, Latin and archaic English phrases.

• The Renaudot, one of France's top lit prizes, has, for the first time in its history, been awarded posthumously -- to Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky.

  Members of the Renaudot jury admitted they had to bend the rules to give the prize to Nemirovsky, who died in Auschwitz in August 1942.
  
  "Prizes are meant to promote writers. We're not there to compensate the injustices done to people who are dead. Next year why not honour Alexandre Dumas?" said chairman Andre Brincourt, who was outvoted by the rest of the committee.

• Beatrice has a fun (except for the parties involved) blind item concerning the NBAs: Which major publishing conglomerate forgot to submit a rising star's novel and short story collection, both published to significant accolades?

  The oversight is even more egregious when you remember that the publishers were trying to position their author, who'd been appreciated by a fervid but small fan base for years, as finally ready for the big time--an assessment the reviews would have seemed to have validated. And, we hear, at least one judge was shocked when asked about the omission, having assumed the two books were published late last year and not realizing they were, in fact, eligible.

• Christopher Buckley (No Way to Treat a First Lady), Dan Zevin (The Day I Turned Uncool), and Robert Kaplow (Me and Orson Welles) vie for this year's Thurber Prize for American Humor.
• Slate praises The 9/11 Commission Report, a NBA nominee in nonfiction, for its contribution to the genre of "reconstructed nonfiction narrative." (We know of one blogger who would not-so-quietly disagree.)
• Welsh-born poet Kathryn Gray scores a place on the shortlist for the £10,000 TS Eliot Prize with her debut volume The Never Never. "I nearly fell off my chair when I heard the news."
• The shortlist for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award 2004 has been announced. Among the nominees: Muriel Spark, Rhona Cameron, and Andrew Drummond.
• Also recently announced: the shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. The prize package consists of £15,000 cash; £1500 William Hill free bet; specially commissioned handbound book; and a day at the races.
• Utne announces its Independent Press Awards Nominees. Arts/Creativity Coverage nominees (listed on page two) include Bookforum and Rain Taxi; Online Cultural Coverage nominees (page four) include Arts & Letters Daily and New Pages.

• James Boswell's manuscripts and letters go missing.
• New Line Cinema acquires the rights to Love in the Time of Cholera; screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) will pen the adaptation.
• Publishers urge John Peel's widow ("known to her late husband's listeners as 'Pig'") to complete Peel's autobiography.
• MTA officials tear down ads reading "Read Books, Get Brain." Meanwhile, Penguin's "Are You Good Booking?" campaign moves onward.
• "Carl Hiaasen is South Florida's literary proctologist: he examines the region's assholes."
• The Sydney Morning Herald profiles the "snobbish, self-obsessed, insecure" and "bisexual" inventor of the literary fairy story, Hans Christian Andersen. "The super-sensitive hypochondriac was so terrified of being buried alive that on his travels through Europe he slept with a note saying 'I only seem dead' by his side."
• Conversational Reading points out that NBA winners, like Emmy winners or Oscar winners, bring home golden statuettes; theirs, however, look like cinnamon sticks jabbed into a cube of cheddar. (Incidentally, this page's bottom right-hand image displays the designer's adaptation of the statuette to a WTC Site Memorial.)

Even before his illness, Kafka wondered whether producing fragments might be the only way he could be true to his incomplete view of the world. He had sad fantasies of being sliced up like roast meat, or of being a log and having thin shavings drawn off him, while the last story he wrote was about a singing mouse, in which he finally asked the question that had haunted his career: "Is it her singing that charms us, or isn't it rather the solemn stillness that surrounds the feeble little voice?"

A similar question might be asked of any writer, because writing is always partial: it involves the choice of some words rather than others, and choice requires rejection. As Henry James observed, "Stopping, that's art": the writer must know what to shut out, when to shut up.

But even stopping need not be an imaginative curb, because alerting us to what is not being said can also remind us of how often life gives words the slip, whether through secrets, reticence or repression.