Granted: "If you can read, you can walk into a job later on; if you can't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that" isn't the best possible endorsement for literacy—frankly, as the son of Vietnam-era Marines, I find it more than a little offensive—and the initial framing of the discussion, where Fox commentator Mike Baker dismisses the remark as "leftist elitist crap," is coarse but not entirely out of bounds—but the conversation quickly moves away from King's political stance and his alleged lack of patriotism to roughly three minutes of speculation about whether that infamous car accident left him with permanent brain damage. But let's face it: People who sit there asking "wasn't there some NFL player who went into the army, too?" aren't exactly in a position to question anybody else's grasp of current events. (Although maybe, he added sarcastically, Fox just doesn't like their talent to bring up Pat Tillman on air because his example raises too many awkward questions about the way the war's been fought.)

As Tina Dupuy of FishbowlLA comments, "A writer—elling kids to read—what a loser. It's the best nerd bashing-geek punching prom ever!"

I reached out to the best expert I could on the subject of reefer and literature, none other than Mike Edison, former publisher of High Times and author of I Have Fun Everywhere I Go (BTW, I can't wait to go to that book launch party next week!) to see what he thought of "the ganja" as a suitable subject for a picture book.

The book's premise stinks worse than Snoop Dogg's last record - little kids catching mommy and daddy in the act of getting stoned? If you can't get stoned without getting busted by your six-year old, you should have you bong taken away. I am all for education, but there is something seriously wrong about teaching first-graders about weed. What's next, Fisher Price's "My First Water Pipe"? The whole thing sounds like some vast stoner conspiracy to increase the flagging circulation of anachronistic marijuana magazines. Either that or Bill O'Reilly created it so he'd have something new to scream about. What someone should really write is a dumbed-down book for gullible parents who've been conned by corrupt pharmaceutical companies to keep their kids high on behavior-modification drugs.

Mike should know what is and what's not appropriate, especially with the subtitle to his book being "Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World."

As a side note, what I love is how Headline News paired this story with the new White House report on dope use and mental illness and the story about the teens who (in this great headline) Dig Up Skull For Pot 'Bong'.

With this promotional video for the paperback release of James Rollins's The Judas Strain, the book trailer takes on the complete look and feel of its Hollywood counterpart. The sources at HarperCollins who passed the video along confirmed that the action scenes were shot especially for the trailer by Brady Hall, a Seattle-based filmmaker who also works with Meg Cabot on her wacky videos, as well as animated trailers for the Warrior Cats, Septimus Heap, and Dangerous Book franchises. (So, yes, all that swirling hieroglyphic animation is his handiwork, too.)

Which I thought was some new marketing gimmick, but according to Google it's been going for a couple years now. Huh. But it's that "traditional authors" nomenclature that cracks me up, every time. You don't see this in other creative fields; Scarlett Johansson doesn't get billed as a "celebrity vocalist," for example, and you never get an exhibit of "traditional and celebrity painters."

Sedaris goes on to say that "we live in a time when our government is telling us some pretty profound lies. And then James Frey writes a book and it turns out some of it's not true. No one asked for their vote back, but everyone wanted back the money they'd spent on that book. We're in the shadow of huge lies and getting angry about the small ones."

The issue of how long someone whose sales were predicated on sympathy and trust spent in jail might not seem like a "small lie" to everyone, of course, but yeah, it's not a WMD-level whopper. So I guess I, like, 97% agree with Sedaris.

"I wouldn't say that birds are Jewish," Jonathan Rosen said, with some light chuckling from the audience, during the Q&A portion of his lecture at the John Templeton Foundation's inaugural book forum earlier this week. Elaborating on the question, he emphasized that the condition birds spoke to, the one that inspired the questioning comparison—"we do not know exactly where we belong, where our native ground is, where our homes are"—was, particularly in the early 21st century, more universal in scope. Other questions from the audience were more playful: "Are there bagel-eating pigeons riding the A train into Manhattan?" Rosen responded in disbelief to one such query.

Angelique Chrisafis, who interviewed her in the Guardian, says that while "literary theorists welcome the precious psychological insight into the biggest voice of a generation," everyone else might just find the situation sad: Ceccaldi says that her son is an "evil, stupid little bastard" and adds that "this individual, who alas came from my womb, is a liar, an imposter, a parasite and above all - above all - a petit arriviste ready to do absolutely anything for money and fame." One senses that Houellebecq won't be sending any Teleflora bouquets or Hallmark cards her way this or any other year.

When I saw the job listing for an Editor at Orbit I was worried that my old pal Devi Pillai had gotten the axe. Turns out that's not the case; Orbit is actually planning on doubling the size of its list in the US over the next 3 years taking its title output to 70-80 per year by 2011 (and 10% for the next 3 years in the UK). And, according to publisher Tim Holman, "Hachette Australia will start to publish SFF titles under the Orbit imprint later this year."

At a time when some houses are cutting back on staff (I'm looking at you Houghton and Doubleday), Orbit is currently hiring an additional editor in the US, and will be making further appointments in due course. In the UK, Bella Pagan has been promoted to Commissioning Editor, and Marketing Executive Samantha Smith has taken on a number of editorial responsibilities. Darren Turpin has also joined the imprint as an additional Marketing Executive, focusing on online marketing campaigns. Orbit's latest national bestseller is Matter by Iain M. Banks which is number one on the Locus hardcover list this month

(Full disclosure: Not only am I friendly with Smith, but Channel V Media, which represents Story Worldwide, the "brand storytelling" firm behind Lexus's print and online magazines, is also my PR firm.)

"Lexus did a focus group," Smith says of the serial's origins. "Lexus owners listed travel, food, and reading as their top three leisure activities. So Lexus decided to add some fiction to their magazine... The project was undertaken in the spirit of fun. The writers got to do, basically, whatever they wanted, within minimal guidelines. The guidelines were more about sex, drugs, and drunk driving than selling the vehicle. So here's an opportunity for nine writers to get their writing, bios, and info about their novels out to a million readers. Is that a sellout or a clever use of new media—specialty publishing—to reach readers and maybe sell some books?"

Naturally, an extract from the memoir printed in the Sunday Times in late March (the book's already out in the U.K.) has NSFW bits in it, too. Boy, the reading tour is going to be fun.

(If anybody else is planning to give stuff away besides the usual galleys and book bags, and wants to give us a sneak peek, that'd be cool.)

"I cannot imagine a more vibrant and alive city to host a festival of literature," says festival director Isobel Abulhoul, who is also the co-owner of Magrudy's, an independent bookstore in Dubai. In addition to bringing in a bumper crop of international writers, the festival appears to be explicitly designed to call attention to the literary culture of the United Arab Emirates—both to spotlight significant Arab authors and to emphasize the status of Dubai as a place where people love to read (setting aside the censorship issues that prevent Magrudy's from stocking, say, "anti-religious" books like The God Delusion).

Stephanie Murg of UnBeige, mediabistro.com's design blog, spotlights Taschen's new collection of circus art, which features "over 900 color and black-and-white illustrations, including photographs by everyone from Matthew Brady and Walker Evans to Lisette Model and, get this, Charles and Ray Eames."

And, as the above illustration demonstrates, lots of posters.

"As God's publicist, I can tell you that I have to be on my "A" game." Says Staggs. " If you've read any of God's prior bestselling works (particularly the Old Testament), you know that he can be a tough and demanding client. I'm hoping that he'll be giving me a staff that turns into a snake, or at least some good pull-quotes with which I can woo the media. Either would be sufficient!"