Ouch:

Britain's Orange Prize for Fiction, which is annually awarded to a female author, will cease to be orange after the 2012 award is presented next week. That's because the Orange Prize is sponsored by Orange, a British mobile communications company, which after 17 years has decided to end its association with the prize.

According to the Bookseller, Orange plans to move its arts support to movie projects.

Maybe it's time for someone to write the 354,932nd article predicting the death of books, now.

Here's the thing: Only a shitty critic would take a writer to task for not writing the same book twice....

(Keep reading.)

Last night, the CEO of British chain bookseller Waterstones announced that his company was going to sell Amazon's Kindles in its stores, and they would be selling Kindle e-books on their site. Watch the announcement right here:

This video reminds me of something I wrote in my eulogy for Borders Books and Music almost a year ago, when Borders announced that Amazon.com was going to handle Borders' e-commerce side:

There's a photo of Jeff Bezos and then-Borders president and CEO Greg Josefowicz shaking hands to celebrate the partnership. Josefowicz has weatherman hair and a broad smile, and he's beaming past the camera with the cocksure giddiness of a guy who thinks he just got rid of all his problems because he sold his dumb old cow for a handful of really cool magic beans. But when you pull your eyes away from Josefowicz's superheroic chin, you notice that Jeff Bezos is smiling directly into the camera with keen shark eyes. His smile is more relaxed, a little more candid than Josefowicz's photo-op-ready grin. It's the face of someone who's thinking, I finally got you, you son of a bitch.

It's a photograph of the exact second that Borders died.

The clock started ticking for Waterstones the second they announced this partnership. I don't know how long it'll be, but Waterstones will be gutted just as surely as Borders was by this decision.

Spring has sproinged, as has my reinvigorated interest in A Book About a Thousand Things, published in 1946.

• baatt

I have known people like Charles the Wise—what's worse, I've worked for people like Charles the Wise. (I bet you have, too. There are lots of 'em out there. Those people are always shitty bosses who only get shitty work out of their employees.)

And I have never imagined that modern humans would use a valuable commodity like tobacco as zoo fodder.

And if you can't make it but you'd still like to help First Book buy books for children, the donation page is right here. A $15 donation will buy six books for a child.

Here's an interview with Kuwait's top book censor:

“As a censor, I read a book from beginning to the end, word by word. In case the censor makes a mistake, the head of the department will be responsible for this mistake, as they should also read the book. The time to finish censoring a book depends on the kind of the book. For instance, a philosophical book needs about four days to read,” Dalal added...Working as a censor is interesting. “I like this work. It gives us experience, information and we always learn something new. It takes about a year or a year and a half to become a censor, as the person is first employed as a censor assistant. The employee first starts slow in reading and it takes him a week or days to finish a book. Also, beginners are not given political or religious books in the beginning as these are difficult. Instead we give them children’s books or some scientific books, which are easy,” said Dalal.

It's funny how anything can sound banal if you do it for a living.

(Via Disinformation.)

Now that Bea Arthur is gone, nobody says "I'll agree to the fisting, but I'd really like to claim your ass" like Gilbert Gottfried.

And if you're wondering: Yes, the book is just as terrible as it sounds.

(Via Matt Ruff on Twitter.)