you never miss electricity until you don’t have any, hurricane lamps and a gas stove kept me cozy while i went through internet withdrawl. long wet days in new england.

birthday boy • 1912 – Studs Terkel, American writer

1874 – A flood on the Mill River in Massachusetts destroyed much of four villages and killed 139 people.

something new • James L. Swanson’s Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, an 1865 police procedural.

recycled remainders • Random House plans raise the proportion of recycled paper it uses to print books from 3 percent to at least 30 percent.

MV Doulos • the world’s oldest ocean-going passenger ship now floating bookfair docks in Phuket Thailand.

audio • NPR interviews New Yorker writer Roger Angell about his new memoir, Let Me Finish

much ado • the New Yorker’s Peter Boyer’s take on marketing The Da Vinci Code to Christians : Hollywood Heresy.

worth reading • from Commentary Magazine Bette Howland gives us a great piece on Harry Houdini.

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• James Lasdun, a British author who relocated to New York, picked up the first National Short Story Prize for An Anxious Man.

• Alberta author Birk Sproxton has won the $25,000 MacEwan Author’s Award for his memoir and short fiction collection Phantom Lake: North of 54.

• David Bodanis’s Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World was awarded the Aventis prize for science books.

African ‘Booker’ • The five shortlisted writers for this year’s Caine prize for African Writing cover all four corners of the continent, from Morocco to South Africa, Kenya to Nigeria. Unusually for a mixed prize, the list also features just one man.

something new • the Philadelphia Inquirer reviews of Paul Werner’s Museum, Inc.: Inside the Global Art World.