PEN/Faulkner nominees: Jerome Charyn’s The Green Lantern, Edwidge Dandicat’s The Dew Breaker, Ha Jin’s War Trash, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and Steve Yarbrough’s Prisoners of War.

Despite last month’s successful efforts to remove all copies of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code from bookstores, the book continues to sell. Da Vinci Code readers have been exiting bookstores with one or two copies in their bags, even when their credit card receipts show that they’ve purchased three or four copies. Industry experts are at a loss to explain the book’s sustained popularity, but Saks Fifth Avenue has reported that “Dan Brown books are a handy accessory” and are “thicker and more convincing than a coffee-table book.”

Umberto Eco is still awaiting his cut from the book’s obscene profits.

The new covers for the next Harry Potter book were revealed yesterday. The British cover features Harry and Dumbledore with fire sticks in their hands, surrounded by flames. The U.S. cover has Harry and Dumbledore standing over a basin giving off a green light. And the cover Al Qaeda version has Harry and Dumbledore burning an American flag, with Evil Bert laughing in the distance.

NYT Corrections: “A report in the New York pages yesterday in the new feature headed “Ink,” about the Rev. Al Sharpton’s weight-loss plan, misstated the frequency of his workouts in some copies. He exercises three times weekly, not three times a day.”

Damn. I really wanted to see Sharpton become either a triathlete or the next Subway Diet posterboy. Thank you for spoiling my fantasy, Gray Lady!