Straying into the political only in so far as it touches the literary, galleycat points us to this interesting Time Magazine article about Sarah Palin which delves into her alleged efforts to ban books at the local library:

[Former Wasilla mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

Jodi Picoult speaks with the Guardian about her writing routine and gives advice to new writers.

Visit the Invisible Library, an alphabetical list of books that exist only within other books for some (extremely!) light reading.

[ via three percent ]

With Amazon's recent purchase of Shelfari, the future of the various social networking avenues for book lovers remains unclear. I'm a Goodreads man myself, as are most (according to Tim O'Reilly's telling graph), but Amazon could tilt that balance with a creative integration of Shelfari into its massive empire.

Another wrinkle: Amazon recently purchased Abebooks, who, in turn, own a piece of Librarything which further poises Bezos & Co. for domination in the social reading space. Goodreads remains the indie choice among the bunch and still the favorite.

Stay tuned.