But How Are They Going to Ban E-Books? (Plus They Smell Horrible When You Burn Them)

--Don't ask, don't tell, or read, or think, or . . .

"The library's board of trustees voted 5-3 Thursday evening in favor of restricting minors' access to 'Sex for Busy People,' 'The Lesbian Kama Sutra,' 'The Joy of Sex' and 'The Joy of Gay Sex' because they deemed the material 'harmful to minors.'"

Why is it always the books about sex that are deemed "harmful to minors?" Not that I think any books should be banned, or "restricted" (though there are more than a few that I think shouldn't have been written) – but why doesn't anyone go after the ones that glorify violence, like the Left Behind series? Or polemic, like, um, anything by Ann Coulter? On a related note, isn't this a weird society where "shut up," maybe the ultimate effacement in the English language, isn't an obscenity, but the f-bomb is the king daddy of curse words?

--Nathan Bransford posts the "Ten Commandments for a Happy Writer." Well worth a read, but if you don't have time, here's what it all comes down to:

"10. Keep writing. Didn't find an agent? Keep writing. Book didn't sell? Keep writing. Book sold? Keep writing. OMG an asteroid is going to crash into Earth and enshroud the planet in ten feet of ash? Keep writing. People will need something to read in the resulting permanent winter."

--Man, this e-book stuff moves fast. One big piece of news every day? How about two? Amazon launches a Kindle app for the I-phone on the same day that a Morgan Stanley analyst predicts that one million Kindles will be sold by Thanksgiving. In related news, we're working on making Booth, our new literary journal, Kindle- and I-phone-compatible -- and I think we just about have it figured out.