It's not just Bush who's dropping the –ly lately. ("We want to get this bridge rebuilt as quick as possible.")

Compared to previous years, the 2007 Man Booker list is comprised of a set of low-profile names, with Ian McEwan being the most well-known writer on it.

Some helpful tips on maintaining an attention span without turning off the router.

Revered by young people for decades, Kerouac's classic might be losing steam since the great road-trip adventure has become a popular middle-class habit.

Yugoslavian-born Charles Simic immigrated to the United States when he was 16 and started writing poems in English only a few years after learning the language. Eighteen books later, the Pulitzer Prize-winner is named America's 15th Poet Laureate.

New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier: "The New Republic plays many significant roles in American culture, and one of them is to find and to develop writers with whom the New Yorker can eventually staff itself."

Charges are dropped against the 16-year-old French boy who posted an excellent translation of the final Harry Potter installment two months before the October release date of the official French-language edition.

Local politicians and protesters disrupted a reading by novelist and poet Taslima Nasrin in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The venue was ransacked and the author assaulted.