IndieBound

Buy a Friend a Book Week has rolled around again. For ideas, check out IndieBound (which was once BookSense). From their website, you can find the independent bookstore closest to you. There are also several lists of notable books, divided into categories intuitive enough to make a librarian blush.

Some standouts of new releases include Pete Dexter's Spooner and Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply. Also, good news for those of you who have to move every 18 months: Marilynne Robinson's Home is now out in paperback.

Going, Going, Gone.

Former Governor Sarah Palin has finished her memoir "Going Rogue: An American Life." Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, plans to print 1.5 million copies of the 400-page book. They expect it to be a big holiday hit.

From an early draft using voice-to-text software:

I'd of gone rogue younger if I knew there was so much money to make. I ran for office with old McCain. He was a real drag. All those houses and no guns. Just didn't make no sense. Also, I know he didn't really believe in the rapture. I kept asking to use some verses from Revelation, and he kept saying no and massaging his temples. Probably why we didn't win. But 2012, watch out. I'm gonna fly over America and shoot down all my opponents. The last thing they'll see is me in my helicopter, a gun aimed right at their evil, media-loving hearts.

Wow, this thing really types whatever I say. It even adds the g's. Okay, I'm going to begin now.

Now.

I know how tough fights are won. I won the vice presidency. I won the governorship of Alaska. Next, I'm going to win the president of Alaska—I mean America. You guys can get rid of that right?

I know what you're gonna say. "Sarah, I thought you hated the media. Isn't a book media?" Let me just answer that question now, so we can get to the important stuff. Books are not media. Newspapers and the internets are media. Broadcast news is the media. Books are books. They are their own thing.

The voters know that there is a time for politics and a time for leadership. I know this too. That's, therefore, something that we have in common. Todd understands too. He fishes and works in the fields just like regular folk. Granted, he is a world champion snow machine racer, but he's not uppity about it. You know that I have a servant's heart. That's why I quit being governor of Alaska. That country—dammit. I mean state will be okay without me. America needs me in 2012. If they don't let me down, I won't let them down.

Financial Problems or Drug-Induced Brevity?

Denis Johnson

Tree of Smoke (2007) 720 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 4, 2007)

Nobody Move (2009) 208 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 28, 2009)

Thomas Pynchon

Against the Day (2006) 1,085 pages
The Penguin Press; First Edition edition (November 21, 2006)

Inherent Vice (2009) 384 pages
Penguin Press HC (August 4, 2009)