Literary links #2

1. The annual Tournament of Books has concluded with Toni Morrison's A Mercy surviving the round of 16. The winner of the tournament has gone on to win the Pulizter Prize the last two years, so if you're looking to handicap your literary award bets....

2. The Millions has come up with the brilliant idea of putting together an interactive map of independent bookstores across the world. In the spirit of this collaborative effort, they are hosting a Walking Tour of New York's Independent Bookstores. Sounds like a fine idea for a warm spring afternoon in San Francisco. Any takers?

3. Check out the photo albums of mouth-watering "books" from the annual Edible Book Festival.

4. April is National Poetry Month. Nick will be posting more about our modest celebration of the finest art, but in the meantime, have fun with Raymond Queneau's unfathomably brilliant 100,000,000,000,000 sonnets. (Follow the links on the bottom of that page for English translations.)

5. A "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks (via Three Percent)? "Brilliant"! Somehow it reminds me of Chinglish, of which a 2nd volume has just been released.

6. Finally, baseball season is upon us. I have nothing to look forward to since my favorite lovable losers won it all last year (and, really, I wouldn't be a true Phillies fan if I didn't expect the worse), but how about this list of the Best Baseball Books of 2009 from the SF Chronicle?