I like to read.

Amazon will add a neat new feature to its Kindle e-book program later this year, designed to let you loan Kindle e-books to your friends, either via Kindle devices or the Kindle app for the iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.

Advertising pioneer and visionary Roger Sterling, Jr., served with distinction in the Navy during World War II, and joined Sterling Cooper Advertising as a junior account executive in 1947. He worked his way up to managing partner before leaving to found his own agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, in 1963 … Taken as a whole, Roger Sterling’s pithy comments and observations amount to a unique window on the advertising world—a world that few among us are privileged to witness first-hand—as well as a commentary on life in New York City in the middle of the twentieth century.

Is this something fans of Mad Men will actually pick up and read?

Thanks to the ongoing legal wars between the people Stieg Larsson left behind, readers only have three books from his bestselling series. With no fourth (or is it actually fifth) book to be published, what’s a reader to do?

GalleyCat gives a nice suggestion here, including “The Story of a Crime” series.  Does anyone else have good suggestions for lovers of the Millenium books? 

I, by the way, own The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo but have yet to even open the cover.  I promise, I’ll get around to it.  I do, however, recommend the movie highly!

Meanwhile, sales of paperback and hardcover books continue to decline across the board. Hardcover sales of children’s and young adult fiction came in at $77.8 million, an 8% decline from the previous month and a 14.6% decline from August of last year. Paperback sales in the category were down 15.1% for the month, a 7.6% decrease year-over-year.

Benjamin Franklin also liked to take baths. In fact, he liked to take “air baths,” where he sit around naked in a cold room for an hour or so while he wrote.

In a conversation with a Chinese artist, Xiaobo explained why he wrote, despite government control: “From a certain point of view, what with artists dealing with so much suffering, and a nation facing so many tragic incidents, I feel that Chinese artists have deliberately held back. To express things in their reality would be to invite censorship and to ultimately lose one’s market – it’s a conflict of interests. So much accumulated suffering yet no corresponding artistic record – what a tragedy. Whether its in terms of politics or in terms of an individual life, that no such work exists to capture the totality of the moment is sad, very, very sad.”