I’m still trying to sift through all this BEA data while simultaneously engineering audio for Segundo. I hope to post more things tonight (particularly on details from various publishing houses). The goal is to get done with all this by the end of the week. In the meantime, check out Bud Parr’s extremely comprehensive coverage, which crosses over with mine and covers a few booths I didn’t get a chance to check out.

Here’s the morning roundup:

• Terry Teachout (who sadly was out of town during BEA week) tackles “Culture in the Age of Blogging.”
• Based on some recommendations from trusted people, I’m more interested in Nicole Krauss the writer then Nicole Krauss the person, but, despite my JSF mandate, even I couldn’t resist this profile, which tells how the two met. Apparently, the two met on a blind date. I leave experts to conclude whether it had something to do with Mr. Foer’s email skillz.
• According to a new scientific survey, successful marriages involve comparable education backgrounds, not socioeconomic strata. Interestingly, education affects the speed at which couples marry and have children. Maybe this explains all those crushes I had on teachers growing up.
• I didn’t check out the Google Print booth at BEA, but IT World did.
• Clay Evans’ review of Sam Weller’s Bradbury bio reveals some interesting details: Bradbury traveled primarily by roller skates well into his twenties and he was a flamboyant irritant to science fiction authors.
• Apparently, some of the tales from the Brothers Grimm can be traced to women. Scholars believe that women provided these tales to Jacob and Wilhelm, and the Brothers Grimm capitalized upon these stories. Perhaps Terry Gilliam and Ehren Kruger aren’t as far off with their film premise as we figured.
• Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian has received a $2 million advance. It’s an elaborate multi-plotted tale about Vlad the Impaler. The film rights have been picked up by Sony and it has the Susanna Clarke/Michael Faber-style “ten years to write” label written all over it. But is it any good? Laura Miller says it’s good, not great. Publishers Weekly notes that “a lot here lives up to the hype.” The Los Angeles Times thinks its okay, but quibbles with the overwrought prose.
• The Telegraph speaks with Christopher Hitchens. There’s the usual contrarian grenades, including Hitch confessing that he doesn’t find Marilyn Monroe beautiful.
• Yet another example of BEA covered with an amateurish glitterati angle: Wynonna Judd and Kim Catrall described as “leading thinkers.”
• This week’s upcoming film horrors: The Banger Sisters’ Bob Dolman making How to Eat Fried Worms and Akiva Goldman writing a remake of The Poseiden Adventure for Wolfgang Petersen.
• A collection of celebrities playing table tennis (via the Morning News)
• While I was out of town, a man broke the six-and-a-half-hour endurance test at the Masturbate-a-thon.
• Notepad Invaders (via Quiddity)
• Editing Hunter S. Thompson (via Kitabkhana)

• Ian McEwan mourns Saul Bellow. In particular, he describes how placing a quote from Herzog before a novel makes it sound more important than it really is.
• If the Atlantic won’t publish fiction, an author can always aim for Cosmo. That’s precisely what author Mary Castillo did for her novel Hot Tamara. Of course, the excerpt in question is a “hot and heavy love scene.” But it was either that or a questionnaire determining how effectively you satisfy your man.
• Phillip Seymour Hoffman will play Truman Capote in a biopic. That’s fine casting. Unfortunately, in another Capote-related film, Every Word is True, Sandra Bullock will play Harper Lee. To add insult to injury, the producers plan to change the title of Lee’s novel. It will now be known as To Kill the Girl Next Door Type.
• Elizabeth George fanboys are incensed with the latest novel. In George’s latest, a central character in the Lynley series has been killed off, spawning resentment, multiple sessions of therapy, devious fan fiction, and a firm convinction to seek more mediocre best-selling novelists.
• And Stuart Dybek has made this year’s ALA Notable Books list for I Sailed With Magellan. He hopes to make next year’s list by titling his novel-in-progress I Painted With Picasso, even though it has nothing to do with the famed artist.

• Apparently, Stephen King isn’t the only one offing himself in his novels. Kinky Friedman has committed literary suicide in his new book Ten Little New Yorkers. And that’s just the prologue. Personally, I’m waiting to see if these authors start murdering other novelists within their novels. After all, suicide seems a cowardly way to go. Even in fiction.
• The Godfather is being turned into a video game by Electronic Arts. What’s even more frightening is that new dialogue was recorded by the actors because the sound quality of the original film was “too dated to meet today’s technology standards.” Even Brando spent four hours in a booth shortly before dying, perhaps the most regrettable final role for a great actor since Orson Welles’ appearance in The Transformers: The Movie. Of course, when the inevitable “Sonny Lives (with Cher)!” MOD comes out, perhaps it might be worth a few hours of gameplay.
• No love for Brion Gysin? One of Burroughs’ seminal influences is getting a theatrical revival in a musical homage entitled The Dream Machine. In a related story, the story of Scooby and Shaggy’s literary influences will be developed into a play called The Mystery Machine, whereby Captain Underpants will receive its long-owed dues. Sadly, Scrappy Doo proved too small and intricate to reproduce for the stage.
• USA Today offers a roundup of debut novels.
• Bad enough that Taylor “Sentimental Hack” Hackford absconded with the legend of Ray Charles. Now he’s meddling with Charles Bukowski, with the humorless Sean Penn in tow. Can we all agree that if you have An Officer and a Gentleman and Against All Odds on your resume that you’re forbidden from weighing in on literary icons? The thing that kills me about today’s literary documentaries is that they seem to avoid the real interesting people. Where, for example, is director Barbet Schroeder, who once threatened to cut off his fingers if he couldn’t make Barfly?
• And this month’s literary criminal is Ronald Jordan, who apparently stole some 50,000 books and resold them at street stalls.