Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie's panoramic 1981 allegory of the birth of modern India, is heading for the big screen. Deepa Mehta is to direct and co-write the adaptation with the author, and the film is expected to start production in 2010, it was announced in New York yesterday.

Rushdie's novel, which has been selected twice as the best-ever Booker prize winner, is widely regarded as one of the premier literary works of the latter half of the 20th century and is required reading on most university syllabuses. Often associated with another masterpiece of magic realism, Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, the story begins with the birth of Saleem Sinai at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the moment India became independent. Far from a picaresque Everyman, Saleem discovers he shares special powers with every other person born in the same hour and comes to see himself as the incarnation of India, an avatar of the nation. With its bravura mix of historical events and inventive flights of fancy, the 650-page novel has long been seen as unfilmable.

Reached at home in Toronto, Mehta rejected any such concerns. "If I was doing it myself it would be rather daunting," she said. "The fact that we like and respect each other is a good foundation for collaboration."

The pair will begin writing the screen adaptation in mid-March, with Rushdie and Mehta's partner, David Hamilton, acting as co-producers. Hamilton said he had had preliminary discussions with two Hollywood studios, both of which were keen to see the fruits of the Rushdie-Mehta pairing. But, he added, the script would dictate the ultimate response.

The agreement, which is still subject to approval from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, will see Google paying out $125m in total, of which a minimum of $45m will go to authors and publishers whose books were digitised without their approval. Google will also pay $34.5m to establish a book rights registry, and will cover legal fees.

Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr said the deal made "good sense". "As an author, well, we appreciate payment when people use our work," he said. "It's hard work writing a book, and even harder work getting paid for it."

The agreement follows outrage from American publishers and authors three years ago, when they learnt of agreements struck by Google with certain American universities to scan books which were still in copyright, which would then be digitised and searchable online. American authors' body the Authors Guild led the charge against the search engine, filing suit in September 2005 along with a number of authors.

Under the terms of the agreement, US readers will be able to preview up to 20% of most out-of-print books for free, with authors and rights holders of in-copyright but out of print works able to opt out of the arrangement if they choose.

For in-copyright books that are still in print, readers will be able to find the books, but will not be able to view any portion of it unless its publisher has signed up to Google's partner programme.

The 61-year-old novelist said he had always tried to ask big questions about the role of the individual in history and society. "The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history or does history make us? Do we shape the world or are we just shaped by it?" Rushdie said in an interview published Wednesday.

He said the question of whether individuals acted with free will or were passive victims of events "is, I think, a great question and one that I have always tried to ask" in novels like "The Satanic Verses." "In that sense I wouldn't not have wanted to be the writer that asked it," he said.

The interview ran in The Times newspaper to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the novel's publication. "The Satanic Verses," Rushdie's fourth novel, referred to a legend about Muhammad being tricked by agents of the devil. It enraged some Muslims, was banned in India, burned by demonstrators in England and brought a death sentence for blasphemy from Iran's then-leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The book centers on a 90-year-old man reminiscing about his time at a B-level circus taking care of the animals. He sees the brutality of circus life while falling for the wife of an abusive animal trainer.

The book spent 12 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list in 2006 and hit the list again last year when it was released in paperback. More than 2 million paperbacks have been sold, according to the studio.

A Grafton, Wis., woman said she never expected to be led away from her home in handcuffs simply for failing to return two overdue library books. Heidi Dalibor admitted to ignoring four notices from the library in addition to two phone calls, two letters and a citation that included a court date, WISN-TV, Milwaukee, reported Friday. "I said, what could they possibly do? They can't arrest me for this... I was wrong," Dalibor said.

Dalibor was released after paying her $170 fine. "I completely take responsibility for not paying my fine on time and not going to my court date," Dalibor said. However, the woman said the library will now never get the copies of "White Oleander" and "Angels and Demons" back on their shelves. "I still have the books and I don't plan to return them because they're paid for now," Dalibor said.

You can tell people until you're blue in the face how good a book is, and the chances are most of your friends won't even bother to pick it up. But then the film comes out and suddenly everyone's an expert. The story has been plucked from its secret place where only those willing to go the distance of several hundred pages can find it and thrust into the attention-deficit glare of mainstream culture for quite literally anyone to come along and "love" just as much as you do... for a week, anyway.

*****

Some of us who love particular writers have more of this pain than other readers.....how many times can you try to tell your movie-going friends that, actually, We Can Remember it For You Wholesale is a classic discussion of reality, identity and memory, and not just a Steven Seagal-level action flick called Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

If anything, the graphic novel reader can enjoy an even higher level of elitism than the ordinary bibliophile - you generally have to go to even greater lengths to find your reading matter. So anyone who has bought - on import, in monthly instalments - the output of British comic writer Alan Moore over the years will no doubt have been dismayed by great works such as V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell reduced to CGI-laden momentary distractions for a Thursday evening when there's nothing on the telly.

"Libraries are facing competition from television, magazines, the internet, e-books, yet they have this archaic and mad idea of charging people money for being slightly late," said library consultant Frances Hendrix - a loud voice in the debate which has been taking place on an online forum for librarians. "It's all so negative, unprofessional and unbusinesslike; like any business, libraries need not to alienate their customers." Liz Dubber, director of programmes at reading charity The Reading Agency, agreed. "My personal view [is that] they're past their sell-by date because they do sustain a very old-fashioned image of libraries which is out of sync with today's modern library environment and the image libraries are trying to project - tolerant, responsive, flexible, stimulating," she said.

*****

The other side of the debate points out that without fines, customers are unlikely to return their books. Alison Wheeler, adult services manager at Suffolk Libraries, told the Guardian that her personal view was that some people do need the "occasional financial nudge" to remind them about doing the right thing. "No one would argue against a parking or speeding fine -- if we didn't have speeding fines it wouldn't mean that people behaved better on the roads," she added.

Miramax Film Corp filed its suit for breach of contract against Pearson on Friday in Manhattan Federal Court, according to Reuters, saying that although Pearson accepted $700,000 in August 2003 under a two-year contract, she has still not delivered the novel. Miramax also said that Pearson has ignored its requests for information about the book's whereabouts since 2006.

I Think I Love You, which Pearson's agent said she believed Pearson would still deliver "but I don't know what deadline she has set herself", is described by its UK publisher Chatto as being "about love in many forms, but first love in particular, how it shapes us and imprints us". Pearson signed a deal for the book with Chatto in 2003. A spokesperson for the publisher said he had "absolutely no information whatsoever" on when it might be published; Amazon lists publication dates between July 2006 and February 2009.

"'The First Circle' is one of the most important novels of the 20th century and we are thrilled to be making this masterpiece available in its full glory," Carrie Kania, senior vice president and publisher of Harper Perennial, said Tuesday in a statement.

Harper Perennial, a paperback imprint of HarperCollins, will release The First Circle in 2009. The 89-year-old Solzhenitsyn, winner in 1970 of the Nobel Prize for literature, returned to his homeland in the 1990s after two decades in exile and now lives in Moscow.

The former Simple Life star exclusively tells E! News that a TV show based on her 2005 coming-of-age novel The Truth About Diamonds is in the works and she's gearing up to be a part of the production.

"I would definitely produce and definitely be in the show," the socialite says, although she stopped short of saying she would play the lead, adding, "I don't know if I need to be the star of this show. "I've got a lot going on right now."

Richie's thinly veiled memoir tells the story of twentysomething Chloe Parker, who was adopted by a music superstar when she was 7 and as a young adult finds herself running with an elite Hollywood party crowd in between run-ins with the police, tabloid rumors and a stint in rehab. Throughout, Chloe struggles to maintain her integrity and sobriety as the people she thought she could trust angle to get a piece of her.

"Midnight's Children" won the Booker Prize in 1981, and the Indian-born writer was hot favorite to take the award decided by the public from a shortlist of six in an online poll. The 61-year-old, whose 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" outraged many Muslims and prompted death threats against him, also won the 25th anniversary Booker prize in 1993.

"I think it was an extraordinary shortlist and it was an honor to be on it," Rushdie said in a recorded message from the United States, where he is on a book tour. His sons, Zafar and Milan, accepted a trophy in London on his behalf, and the author said it was apt that "my real children (are) accepting a prize for my imaginary children." Milan, the youngest, added: "I'm really looking forward to reading it when I'm older. Well done Dad."

Victoria Glendinning, chair of the panel who drew up a shortlist, said the entries were dominated by themes of the end of empire and two world wars. "These are the nettles we have been compelled to try and grasp," she told reporters. But there was some criticism of the award, partly because the choice was narrowed to just six nominees. "It's an artificial exercise, simply because the general public only got to pick from six of the previous winners," said Jonathan Ruppin, promotions manager at Foyles bookshop.

In what will be a shock to writers and publishers, Lahiri's collection of eight stories examining different aspects of the Bengali migrant experience has seen off authors including Booker winners Anne Enright and Roddy Doyle. But the book is already a publishing sensation: published this spring, it went straight into the New York Times's fiction charts at number one. It is an unprecedented feat for a short story writer which the paper compared to "a comet landing", so rarely does a serious writer make this kind of commercial impact. Indeed, unusual success has been the hallmark of her career since she published her first book of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, in 1999, winning the Pulitzer prize and selling 600,000 copies - another very rare feat.

The triple-decker edition was inscribed on behalf of Austen to her close confidante, the governess Anne Sharp. One of only 12 presentation copies printed, which otherwise went to family members and publisher John Murray's contacts, it was the only one given to a friend of the author. Yesterday's auction at Bonhams in London was won by an anonymous British bidder, outstripping an anticipated sale price of £50-£70,000, the highest price ever paid for an Austen novel, and comfortably ahead of the £114,000 fetched by a first edition of Wuthering Heights last November.

The Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit organization supported by the publishing industry, projects a 3 percent to 4 percent growth through 2011, when revenues should top $43 billion. The BISG expects little change in the actual number of books sold and sees a drop in the general trade market by more than 60 million, from 2.282 billion copies in 2007 to 2.220 billion in 2011.

"The hits will keep doing well, but other books will have troubles," says BISG senior researcher Albert N. Greco, a professor of marketing at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business. The findings were announced at BookExpo America, being held this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Barring another Potter-like phenomenon, Greco believes the children's market will barely break even. Modest gains are projected in most adult categories, although that could change once Brown comes out with his long-awaited follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code." No release date has been set for the novel, which also features protagonist Robert Langdon, a Harvard University professor who interprets symbols.

The biggest losers likely will be mass market paperbacks, which continue to plunge as baby boomers seek formats with larger print, while religious books should keep growing, by more than 5 percent annually. The hottest market, according to the industry study group, isn't books, but standardized tests, boosted by the requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation. Growth of 8 percent or better is expected through at least 2009.

Google, the Internet's leader in search and advertising, says the process it developed and is using for scanning the majority of the books in Book Search is proprietary. Employees will not discuss it except to say it is much faster than what Mitchel is doing and it's not destructive. "It took us quite a while to develop it so we do keep that confidential," said a library manager for Book Search, Ben Bunnell, who declined even to say where Google does the scanning.

Many libraries began digitizing books a decade ago to preserve them. Funding from Google allows the 28 libraries it's working with to cut their digitizing costs because they don't have to pay for scanning the books Google wants to include in Book Search.

Through Book Search, users can track down a book on any topic they're interested in and read a small portion. If the book's not protected by copyright, users can download the whole thing. If it is, or if they just want to read an original, they can use Book Search to find copies to buy or borrow. More than 1 million rare or fragile books have been digitized through the Google-Michigan partnership since it began in 2004, with an estimated 6 million to go.

Lily Allen was never the most obvious pick to judge a major literary prize. She's famous not for her views on novels but for a song about London that doesn't even spell out the city's whole name. That didn't stop the organisers of the Orange Broadband prize (awarded for the best novel in English by a woman). In December, they added Allen's name to a judging panel alongside broadcaster Kirsty Lang, journalist Bel Mooney, novelist Philippa Gregory and the Guardian's Lisa Allardice.

Lily Allen was never the most obvious pick to judge a major literary prize. She's famous not for her views on novels but for a song about London that doesn't even spell out the city's whole name. That didn't stop the organisers of the Orange Broadband prize (awarded for the best novel in English by a woman). In December, they added Allen's name to a judging panel alongside broadcaster Kirsty Lang, journalist Bel Mooney, novelist Philippa Gregory and the Guardian's Lisa Allardice.

Many lit snobs squawked, wondering what a 22-year-old pop singer would bring to the table -- other than chewing gum and photographers' flash-bulbs. And now, well, they can stop squawking. Because Lily Allen's out. "It is with deep regret that Lily Allen has withdrawn from the judging panel," Allen's manager told the Daily Mail this weekend. "Lily had read extensively for the first stage of the judging process and was looking forward to the shortlist meeting but recently found that she was unable to commit 100% to the role due to ill-health."

Allen did not attend a judges' meeting last month to discuss the 20-book longlist, according to the Daily Mail. Instead she participated by telephone. Allen also missed a debate last week to decide the shortlist. "Lily hopes that her withdrawal will not detract from the huge importance of the Orange prize and sends her sincere apologies to her fellow judges and to the individual authors," her manager added.

At least since Dante's Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility. These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date's taste in books is "actually a pretty good way -- as a sort of first pass -- of getting a sense of someone," said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives. "It's a bit of a Rorschach test." To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. "It tells something about ... their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is," Fels said. "It speaks to class, educational level."

Naming a favorite book or author can be fraught. Go too low, and you risk looking dumb. Go too high, and you risk looking like a bore -- or a phony. "Manhattan dating is a highly competitive, ruthlessly selective sport," Augusten Burroughs, the author of Running With Scissors and other vivid memoirs, said. "Generally, if a guy had read a book in the last year, or ever, that was good enough." The author recalled a date with one Michael, a "robust blond from Germany." As he walked to meet him outside Dean & DeLuca, "I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of Proust by Samuel Beckett." That, Burroughs claims, was a deal breaker. "If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one's education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn't imagine it."

Viewing modern adaptations was found to be as popular as teachers might have suspected, according to the YouGov poll. With both texts regularly figuring in secondary school English classes, it is no surprise that Baz Luhrmann's Romeo And Juliet and the BBC's Pride And Prejudice were frequently watched. Londoners were the worst culprits, with 16% admitting to using the films to sidestep the texts, the poll commissioned by academic bookseller Blackwell found.

Two-thirds of Britons were unaware that films such as Ten Things I Hate About You and Clueless were actually adaptations. But despite one-third of adults admitting they never read the classics, there are those who think modern life is imitating the traditional. Dickensian Britain has been reborn in the modern binge-drinking culture, according to 54% of those surveyed.

And 47% believe that many young people are suffering from Peter Pan syndrome, unwilling to grow up just as in JM Barrie's classic novel. There is also evidence that the "wag" culture may not be such a new phenomenon - 30% believe that trying to find a rich husband mirrors the themes of Jane Austen's novels.

Phil Jamieson, head of marketing at Blackwell, said: "Classic books are timeless. You will find contemporary themes such as love, sex, murder, mystery and high-octane drama in all the great novels, which is why they still appeal to the masses to this day through films and have parallels with our daily lives."

Former Avon and Berkley publisher Lou Aronica and agent Peter Miller are creating The Story Plant, a publishing company focused on "commercial fiction and author development," intending to "develop writers over multiple books" and "focus on long-term relationships with commercial novelists." Distributed by Perseus Distribution, the line launches this fall with Sienna Skyy's AMERICAN QUEST, a contemporary romantic fantasy, and Jonathan Javitt's medical thriller CAPITOL REFLECTIONS.

Miller, who serves as marketing and rights director for the company, says in the announcement, "When we sign a Story Plant title, we're specifically looking at the book's film and foreign potential. We think the books on this list are going to be successful on a number of platforms." Foreign rights are being sold by Baror International.

The Best of the Booker, a one-off award, is announced today to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Booker Prize. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction recognises and is awarded for the best novel of the year; and now The Best of the Booker will honour the best overall novel to have won the prize since it was first awarded on 22 April 1969.

This is only the second time that a celebratory award has been created. The first was in 1993 - the 25th anniversary - when Salman Rushdie won the Booker of Bookers with Midnight's Children. However, unlike then, this time the public will be able to cast their vote.

In all, 41 novelists have won the prize over the years because in 1974 and 1992 there were two winners. In 1974 Nadine Gordimer won with The Conservationist and Stanley Middleton with Holiday. In 1992 Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient shared the top spot with Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger.

For The Best of the Booker, a panel of judges has been appointed to select a shortlist of six novels. They are biographer, novelist and critic Victoria Glendinning, (Chair); writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, and John Mullan, Professor of English at UCL. Their shortlist will be announced in May, and public voting will then begin via the Man Booker Prize website - www.themanbookerprize.com.

He is happy with the movie version of his best-selling novel Atonement— though he concedes that, at first, he had reservations about its big budget and the medium of film itself. The British author now praises director Joe Wright's "lush visual sense" and "real sense and eye for instinct, for the emotional heart." And he appreciates screenwriter Christopher Hampton's ability to incorporate details from the book into the screenplay.

*****

The film's only actor to be nominated is 13-year-old Irish actress Saoirse Ronan. And McEwan is impressed by her handling of the novel's key character, Briony, who falsely accuses her sister's lover of a rape. "Even if you couldn't have access to her mind, you really got the sense of her mind just turning," McEwan said Tuesday at the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival. "And I think that's really important to the success of the film."

The 59-year-old Booker prize winner added that the movie's other two stars, Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, "worked marvelously together. ...Joe Wright turned out to be an absolutely superb caster." McEwan says he was initially skeptical of the movie's $40 million budget, worrying that the big investment would allow commercial considerations, such as pressure to cast marketable stars, to trump artistic integrity. But, he says, "all my fears were allayed."

Story follows a newspaper editor (Broderick) demoted from politics to comics after a debilitating concussion. He links up with his uncle (Alda) and his high school sweetheart (Madsen) and goes on a road trip to sell what may be a valuable baseball card.

In addition to directing credit for the feature "Kubuku Rides" Kinney acted in the films "Save the Last Dance" and "Sleepers", was a regular on HBO's "OZ," co-founded Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, and appeared on the Rialto in "The Grapes of Wrath."

Ms. Golomb, who represented Ms. Pessl in the sale of "Special Topics," said in an interview last week that Ms. Gibson's book is set in a wealthy community on the North shore of Long Island, and centers around a 16-year-old girl who struggles with the "terribly materialistic world" in which she lives. Like her classmates, Ms. Golomb said, the girl does not like to read, and her parents, in an attempt to get her to embrace literature, hire someone to write a book fitted specifically to her taste and sensibility.

Ms. Golomb said A Book for Carley, which was acquired by Dutton editor-in-chief Trena Keating, was written with a sort of "heightened wit" and precocious dialogue reminiscent of Special Topics and the film Juno.

"The real message of the book is that literature is something that can really inform your life and your life choices and your feelings about yourself, and it's kind of a rallying cry for children and teenagers and all of us to continue to read because it's not just some dry thing that's good for you," Ms. Golomb said. "That's the kind of thing that the publishing community can really get behind and it’s very popular with book clubs."

Egypt has banned a number of Western and secular books from the 40th Cairo International Book Fair, including works by Czech author Milan Kundera and Morocco's Mohamed Choukri, publishers said on Monday.

The Cairo book fair, the Arab world's largest, is dominated by Islamist and educational works, an AFP correspondent reported, and the authorities have not said why the other works were seized at Cairo airport.

"The Egyptian authorities have given no explanation, we were neither informed nor consulted about this measure and the books have not been returned to us," said Rana Idriss, director of Lebanese publishing house Dar al-Adab.

Friedman, whose books include the million-selling The World is Flat, will be promoting his new work, Green is the New Red, White and Blue, an environmentally themed work coming out in August.

BookExpo event director Lance Fensterman said Wednesday he was "especially pleased and proud to have been able to secure him for this book, and for this keynote event. Thomas Friedman's message not only dovetails nicely with our own programming, but it promises to be a definitive 'call to arms' for how we manage our environment in the future."

David Rosenthal, Simon & Schuster's publisher, said he had hired Ms. Painton because he wanted to "bring someone with a very fresh perspective of things." Ms. Painton, 49, had been at Time for nearly two decades before she resigned, working first as a reporter and then as an editor. Before being appointed deputy managing editor, she served as Time's executive editor, which made her the highest-ranking woman editor in the history of the magazine.

At Simon & Schuster, Ms. Painton will acquire and edit books as well as oversee a team of nine editors. Until now, the editors have reported to Alice Mayhew, who is Simon & Schuster's editorial director. Ms. Mayhew will continue to acquire and edit titles and will report to Mr. Rosenthal, as will Ms. Painton.

"I just felt the strong need to launch a second career," Ms. Painton said. She said she saw publishing as complementary to her experience and that her network of contacts could serve as a pool for possible authors.

Mr. Rosenthal said he hoped Ms. Painton's media connections would benefit the publishing house. "Media is critical to how we publicize and promote our books, so a sophisticated knowledge of that ain't a bad thing to have," he said.

Was it hard to watch Atonement be adapted to film by other people? Did you feel possessive?

I'm fairly used to the process. I think this is the fifth or sixth of my stories or novels that have been made into films. I'm sure I'd be possessive if I allowed myself to get involved in the writing of the script. There's a lot to be said for not doing that. I did it once with The Innocent and John Schlesinger, and it was a fairly difficult process because everyone -- the director, the designers, actors, everyone -- had their own ideas and came piling in. And you are suddenly knocked off your perch as the God in this machine. It is better to have someone take a free run at it. But I can't quite walk away, so I like to stay involved. I like film sets, and I enjoy the collaborative process. I'm not sure if I had the worst of both worlds or the best.

With sales for his most recent novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons," well below those for his celebrated "The Bonfire of the Vanities," Wolfe and Farrar, Straus couldn't agree on terms for his next book. Wolfe wanted at least $5 million, more than Farrar was willing to risk.

"We have an old-fashioned model for publishing, which is to publish someone well and consistently for a long time," Farrar publisher Jonathan Galassi said. "That is a model that works well; it's when money rears its ugly head that you have a problem. And we had that with Tom."

Readers may not know, or care, whether an author sticks with Farrar, Straus or Little, Brown, but within the industry there is a long, proud history of writers who became inseparable from their publishers: John Steinbeck and Viking, William Styron and Random House, Ernest Hemingway and Scribner. Even Wolfe liked to call himself the "Cal Ripken" of the book world for his uninterrupted streak with Farrar, Straus — longer, he noted, than Steinbeck's time with Viking.

The business is far larger, more fickle and more impersonal than when Wolfe first joined Farrar, in 1965, but most of the major publishers still have a core of veteran authors who have stayed in one place: David McCullough and Mary Higgins Clark at Simon & Schuster, Maya Angelou and E.L. Doctorow at Random House, Russell Banks and Tony Hillerman at HarperCollins. Longevity can be a story of personal or professional loyalty. At Grove/Atlantic, publisher Morgan Entrekin and author P.J. O'Rourke are so close that Entrekin served as best man at O'Rourke's wedding. Studs Terkel has a decades-long bond with New Press publisher Andre Schiffrin, as does Angelou with editor Bob Loomis. Wolfe worked for years at Farrar, Straus with editor Pat Strachan, who will again handle the author at Little, Brown.

Of the 53 percent of U.S. adults who said they visited a library in 2007, the biggest users were young adults aged 18 to 30 in the tech-loving group known as Generation Y, the survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project said. "These findings turn our thinking about libraries upside down," said Leigh Estabrook, a professor emerita at the University of Illinois and co-author of a report on the survey results. "Internet use seems to create an information hunger and it is information-savvy young people who are most likely to visit libraries," she said.

Internet users were more than twice as likely to patronize libraries as non-Internet users, according to the survey. More than two-thirds of library visitors in all age groups said they used computers while at the library. Sixty-five percent of them looked up information on the Internet while 62 percent used computers to check into the library's resources. Public libraries now offer virtual homework help, special gaming software programs, and some librarians even have created characters in the Second Life virtual world, Estabrook said. Libraries also remain a community hub or gathering place in many neighborhoods, she said.

The survey showed 62 percent of Generation Y respondents said they visited a public library in the past year, with a steady decline in usage according to age. Some 57 percent of adults aged 43 to 52 said they visited a library in 2007, followed by 46 percent of adults aged 53 to 61; 42 percent of adults aged 62 to 71; and just 32 percent of adults over 72.

"We were surprised by these findings, particularly in relation to Generation Y," said Lee Rainie, co-author of the study and director of the Pew project. In 1996 a survey by the Benton Foundation found young adults saw libraries becoming less relevant in the future.

The survey focused on 69 U.S. cities with populations of 250,000 or above. Jack Miller of Central Connecticut State University chose six key indicators to rank literacy. These included newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources. Overall, the top 10 most literate (and wired) cities included:

1—Minneapolis, Minn.
2—Seattle, Wash.
3—St. Paul, Minn.
4—Denver, Colo.
5—Washington, D.C.
6—St. Louis, Mo.
7—San Francisco, Calif.
8—Atlanta, Ga.
9—Pittsburgh, Pa.
10—Boston, Mass.

*****

Some cities that didn't make it to the overall top 10, however, did strut their stuff in one of the six key literacy indicators. For instance, while Newark, N.J., was the 49th most literate city overall, it shared the top spot for newspaper circulation with Washington, D.C.

Plano, Texas, ranking 51st on the overall most-literate-city list, came in second for educational attainment. The education ranking included two factors: the percentage of the city's adult population with a high school diploma or higher and those with a bachelor's degree or higher.

Tough-guy actor and martial arts expert Chuck Norris sued publisher Penguin on Friday over a book he claims unfairly exploits his famous name, based on a satirical Internet list of "mythical facts" about him.

Penguin published "The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 facts about the World's Greatest Human" in November. Author Ian Spector and two Web sites he runs to promote the book, including www.truthaboutchuck.com, are also named in the suit. The book capitalizes on "mythical facts" that have been circulating on the Internet since 2005 that poke fun at Norris' tough-guy image and super-human abilities, the suit said.

It includes such humorous "facts" as "Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried" and "Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits," the suit said, as well as "Chuck Norris can charge a cell phone by rubbing it against his beard." "Some of the 'facts' in the book are racist, lewd or portray Mr. Norris as engaged in illegal activities," the lawsuit alleges.

• Autographed copy of How to Get Somewhere in the Music Business: From Nowhere to Nothing by Mary Dawson (CQK), the must-have guidebook for every aspiring songwriter.
  
  
• Still Summer by Jacquelyn Mitchard (Warner Books), the exciting and moving story of three women and their unexpected and shocking adventure.
  
  
• Widdershins by Charles deLint (Tor), the captivating bestselling urban fantasy set in and around the mysterious town of Newford.
  
  
• Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007, Edited by Rich Horton (Cosmos), the collection of short stories that will thrill sf fans. A Locus Recommended Reading Selection.
  
  

Doris Lessing is unable to travel to Stockholm to receive her Nobel prize for literature on December 10 due to back problems. Instead, the Nobel foundation will present the £766,000 prize to the 87-year-old British writer in London, after medical advisers told her not to travel. In London, Lessing's representative, Olivia Guest, confirmed the cancellation had "to do with her back". Lessing had been invited to collect the award at the ceremony in Stockholm along with the Nobel winners in chemistry, physics, medicine and economics on December 10, the anniversary of the death of prize founder Alfred Nobel 1896.

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Literature prize winners traditionally give a lecture in Stockholm before accepting the award. Lessing's lecture would be prerecorded and shown at the academy on December 7, the foundation said. Guest said she hoped Lessing would be able to record her lecture in London, but added that plans to do so "aren't set in stone".

A friend and I were talking last night, as we usually do, about books. We were going on and on about our favorite authors and I noticed there were no men authors being talked about. When I asked her who her favorite male author was who wrote romance she immediately said Nicolas Sparks, "If you can get past the tragic endings." Well, I knew that was the reason I didn't read his books. I need my HEA (happily ever after).

So for my turn I threw out Paul Levine who writes the great Solomon vs Lord series (think Moonlighting meets Boston Legal). I love the romance in his books, along with the humor, memorable characters and mystery.

Most spectacularly, the lawsuit alleges that Ms. Regan was the victim of a vast conspiracy, set in motion by two unnamed News Corp executives, who were worried that she would expose secrets about her now-indicted former lover Bernard Kerik-the former New York City police commissioner-that would imperil his former boss Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid. News Corp conspired to not only fire her, according to the lawsuit, but also defame her and discredit her so that any allegations she made would be immediately discounted as the ravings of a crazy person. HarperCollins and Ms. Friedman declined to comment for this story. A News Corp spokeswoman called the suit "preposterous."

According to a source close to Ms. Regan and familiar with the negotiations, she was offered a $6.5 million settlement in August but turned it down. Bertram Fields, Ms. Regan's lawyer (though he is not directly representing her in the case) told The Observer last week: "We told them their number was unacceptable. They were warned in advance that she was going to file if they didn't increase the settlement offer they'd made and they responded that they were not going to increase it by one dime. And as a result she filed."

If there's one thing Judith Regan has, it's impeccable timing. Whether it was deliberate or not-and no one's saying-having her lawsuit ready to go just as the first indictments were handed down against Mr. Kerik is a not-so-subtle stroke of genius. Just as he is getting further discredited in the public eye, here comes his former girlfriend to say that not only was he a cheat, but he also might have told her incriminating stuff about the current leading Republican presidential nominee.

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But looked at in another light, the lawsuit's very scope may be revealing in a different way. After all, by sticking narrowly to the breach of contract angle, Ms. Regan would likely have increased her chances of winning. Why go further, and threaten to bring down senior News Corp execs and upend the 2008 presidential campaign? In other words, does Judith Regan have a smoking gun? Or is this just her next sensational, headline-grabbing project?

Harry Potter, James Patterson and Oprah Winfrey's book club aside, Americans - particularly young Americans - appear to be reading less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores are declining. At the same time, performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in basic writing skills.

That is the message of a new report being released today by the National Endowment for the Arts, based on an analysis of data from about two dozen studies from the federal Education and Labor Departments and the Census Bureau as well as other academic, foundation and business surveys. After its 2004 report, "Reading at Risk," which found that fewer than half of Americans over 18 read novels, short stories, plays or poetry, the endowment sought to collect more comprehensive data to build a picture of the role of all reading, including nonfiction. In his preface to the new 99-page report Dana Gioia, chairman of the endowment, described the data as "simple, consistent and alarming."

Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent w