This week's Saunders:
George Saunders: Stardom awaits | Weekend | Guardian Unlimited

Keith Smith, a 16-year-old Iowa boy, has announced his decision to become famous. "But son," said the boy's father, 52-year-old Len Smith, "you don't know how to do anything. You haven't even learned to keep your room picked up yet."

Here's an interview with Michael Chabon:
A novel look at an alternative history | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Q:You've written novels featuring characters not usually seen in so-called literary fiction — comic-book creators, police detectives, swashbuckling adventurers. Are you on a mission to expand the range of what's considered acceptable in literary fiction?

Sometimes I feel that way. But most of the time I'm just writing the kind of books I like to read.

I'm doing it as well as I can and not worrying about whether what I'm doing is literary or not.

I trust it will be because I'm bringing to bear all the resources I have for using language and creating characters and telling stories.

I do feel there is a lot of regrettable bias against genre fiction — science fiction, mysteries, romance fiction. There's an instant, automatic prejudice that is, at the very least, stupid.

The interface could be a little better, but a neat site:
Acme Novelty Archive v3.0:
"The Acme Novelty Archive is an unofficial directory of the works of Mr. F.C. Ware."

Here's another roundup of new kidlit:
For Young Readers - washingtonpost.com
The most immediately interesting one, for me:

Unwind, by Neal Shusterman (Simon & Schuster, ages 13-up, Nov.) Parents in a harsh future society are allowed to have their unruly teenagers "unwound," i.e., harvested for organ transplants. So it's not really killing, is it?

Here's an interview with Andrew Bird
Take5online.com: Bird spins experimental rock

The safe harbour of Rough Trade - Times Online

A kind of interesting article on Devendra Banhart:
Devendra Banhart, a folkie free spirit - POP MUSIC - Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com

In the probably not really time for a lifetime achievement award category:
The Associated Press: Tim Burton Gets Lifetime Award in Venice

And The NY Times puts the Darjeeling Limited into the category of Oscar seeking road movies a la Sideways and Little Miss Sunshine:
On The Bittersweet Road to Oscar, Again - New York Times