“You could say that the book [A Sport and a Pastime] is a long poem to provincial France.”

The University of Texas at Austin has recently acquired Kazuo Ishiguro’s archive. The collection reveals early drafts, a pulp Western novel that Ishiguro thought had been lost, and his early attempts at songwriting. “For many years,” he said, “I’ve been in the habit of keeping a large cardboard box under my desk into which I throw, more or less indiscriminately, all papers produced during my writing that I don’t want to file neatly and take into the next stage of composition: earlier drafts of chapters, rejected pages, scraps of paper with scribbled thoughts, repeated attempts at the same paragraph, etc.”

Did you hear the great news? The Millions is on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and even Tumblr!

Free e-book bibliophiles rejoice, you now have yet another place to download public domain e-books. The Digital Reader reports on Standard Ebooks, a volunteer-based project to “produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks.” Pair with our post from a decade back about Project Gutenberg’s pubbing of “2 B R 0 2 B,” a “lost” story by Kurt Vonnegut.

Regardless of your beliefs, these videos explaining the major theories of religion are a good bet to tickle your fancy. They’re also apropos in light of Pope Benedict’s new book deal.

There’s a pedestrian bridge spanning Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis that features a John Ashbery poem written on its steel beams.  This is a fabulous slideshow of photos showing the poem. Via been thinking.

Hear ye, hear ye! The annual Morning News Tournament of Books has begun! (ICYMI: I wrote about their bracket last week.)