Twelve Books wondered if we might be interested in running an uncaptioned Julia Suits cartoon that had been on display at the launch party for Sex & Sensibility, a collection of cartoons on love and sex by women cartoonists at The New Yorker, earlier this week, along with some of the one-liners that the guests had come up with. After a bit of back-and-forth, I said, sure, let's see the five best captions from the night, and then I'll let GalleyCat readers decide which of them is funniest—after which, I'm told, the person who came up with it will receive a signed, original print of the cartoon.

There's just one thing: The cartoon is NSFW—in an innocuous New Yorker cartoon sort of way, admittedly, but still. Here's a peek; click through if you want to see the full cartoon and vote on the captions. The poll will remain open until 12:01 AM Monday morning, and I'll report on the winner sometime after that.

continued...

As coverage of the lawsuit continues, NYT book specialist Motoko Rich moves past the Giuliani-supporting conspiracy of Russ Buettner's account, focusing instead on the bitter rivalry between Regan and Friedman, and Regan's allegations that Friedman, as stated in the complaint, "was responsible for the instigation and encouragement of a hostile work environment."

In other New York coverage, Page Six makes sure to remind its readers that Regan is a "onetime National Enquirer reporter," and "litigious," which might make you think about Regan's claims that News Corp. used the Post to smear her. On the other hand, the suit forces the column to acknowledge for the first time in recent memory that News Corp. owns both the Post and HarperCollins, so there's that to be thankful for. And there's nothing memorable in the Daily News account, but there's the link for the sake of thoroughness.

AP book man Hillel Italie went to J.K. Rowling's reading at Carnegie Hall Friday, and did he ever come back with a story: Albus Dumbledore was gay, Rowling told one young fan who wanted to know if the Hogwarts headmaster had ever found true love. Apparently Rita Skeeter missed the real scoop about the young Dumbledore's friendship with Grindelwald, as recounted in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have to confess that it slipped right by me, too, but then I had a hard time seeing anything past all the hamhanded parallels to Voldemort's reign of terror and the Third Reich, not to mention all the messianic imagery around Harry. How about you?

At least Rowling has a realistic view of how this is going to play out: After acknowledging that Christian fundamentalists aren't going to like this any better than all the witchcraft, she said, "Oh, my God... the fan fiction." While most of the world, or that segment of it willing to talk to reporters, views all this hoopla as a tremendous advance for human rights, there's also SFScope's uncelebratory editorial—"So what?"—and Pretty, Fizzy Paradise's unenthusiastic shrug—"what would have been admirable is to have it confirmed in the books." On the other hand, Italie spent the weekend looking for the corroborating Deathly Hallows passages, finding a bit of subtext in certain descriptions of Dumbledore's attitude towards his "best friend."

Motoko Rich writes in today's NYT arts section about the controversy over Raymond Carver's earliest short stories, which were heavily edited by Gordon Lish before Knopf published them as What We Talk About When We Talk About Love in 1981—with Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, now pressing for a published edition of the stories the way he wrote them. "I just think it’s so important for Ray's book, which has been a kind of secret, to appear," Gallagher tells Rich, although "I would never want to take What We Talk About out of publication." (Based on what I imagine it continues to sell in paperback, I wouldn't either if I were her.)

Gawker sees this as an interesting case of authorial intent vs. editorial expertise, while Vulture says it's time to let the stories out: "Everyone who cares about this already has an opinion about what Gordon Lish did to Carver's stories," their blogger writes. "Wouldn't it be better if those opinions were based on something besides conjecture?" What do you think?

This week: Wacky Renaissance comedy that breaks the fourth wall, a Da Vinci Code chaser, and avant-garde filmmaking with Latin subtitles!

Leonardo's Shadow, Christopher Grey:

Tree of Life, Chris Loveway

Let's Pretend We Never Met, Nathaniel G. Moore:

Now pick your favorite!

It's Friday in the summer, and that means another end-of-week book trailer poll! Here are the day's contenders:

Tish Cohen, author of TOWN HOUSE, chats with CONTINUITY GIRL author Leah McLaren:

A jazzy trailer for Michael Chabon's THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION courtesy his UK publisher, 4th Estate:

And even though this is completely unauthorized, I couldn't resist this mashup HARRY POTTER with 300:

Your turn to pick!

Summer's here, it's Friday, and we're all just trying to kill time for a few hours until it's safe to bail for the weekend—so I thought I'd combine two of our favorite things to do here at GalleyCat: polls and book trailers. So watch and vote, and then go out to lunch and don't come back! (A word of caution: This week's videos contain mildly suggestive situations and cinematic violence, in case those kinds of things bother you or your coworkers.)

Now you pick!

Here's what we do know about the next selection in Oprah Winfrey's book club: It's a Picador paperback, and it's a work of fiction. So I poked through the backlist—or at least the first few pages, since there's nearly 500 works of fiction in Picador's inventory, and here's some likely candidates, along with some wishful thinking on my part. (But which book falls into which category isn't always as obvious as you imagine!)

What might Oprah pick next for her book club?

And though it's an extreme long shot, I can't resist pointing out that The Corrections is a Picador title—anyone want to make odds on whether Jonathan Franzen is ready to kiss and make up on national TV?

In addition to counting Curtis Sittenfeld's beans, yesterday's breathless revelation by the NYT business section that the publishing industry is a crapshoot included a tidbit about Charles Frazier's $8 million advance for Thirteen Moons, which "sold only 240,000 copies" after its release last October, less than a third of Random House's reported printing (and I think we all know what "reported" means in this context). The only "news" there, though, is the number, which has had seven months to build from the 100,000 figure we quoted from the AP last November.

Do the "low" sales of Thirteen Moons surprise you?

continued...

What with all the debate over whether free ebooks make life worse for writers, we decided to put the question to you directly:

Have you ever downloaded a free ebook?