Like many of us, I can contemplate living “off the grid” but in fact I live in a grid of grids. I spend the majority of my waking hours staring at a computer inside a large, well-lit office building, occasionally breaking for meetings or coffee or birthday cakes (with 300 people on each floor, every day is somebody’s birthday) or lunch.

When my day job causes me great annoyance — which is often, and which is lately — I search for literary models to …

Just in case you were waiting impatiently for the next literary mystery to be solved, I have good news for you: your wait is over. Turns out that the mystery of Shakespeare’s sonnets has been solved. I, for one, am glad. The mystery of Shakespeare’s sonnets solved? Hurrah! I can finally sleep at night.

Ahem.

There’s a new book that explains all of this, a 900-page tome containing the sonnets and critical edition by Hank Whittemore called The Monument: Shake-Speares Sonnets. …

LitKicks member stevadore asks an interesting question prompted by a discussion earlier this week:

“The post on John Twelve Hawks got me thinking … between him and Lemony Snicket, is the future of publishing books going to couched in the author creating a whole separate persona? Is it all just a gimmick to promote sales? If so, do you think it’s a justifiable action, or a cheap sell out?”

Is this merely another facet of a long tradition of pseudonyms in the writing world? …

Singlemalt alerted us to this sad piece of news:

“So I read that he just died. Although I own his three volume set on the Civil War (ranked by the Modern Library as the 15th greatest non-fiction, English language book), I haven’t got around to reading it. He had this relaxed, southern air about him on the Ken Burns Civil War documentary.

I’m bummed out that he died. I don’t really know why because I haven’t read his Civil War trilogy. But it depressed me …

It’s bad enough that the French government has placed France’s major literary awards under tough scrutiny, but now we hear that the chief curator of the country’s national library is under investigation for allegedly stealing numerous valuable manuscripts and artifacts. This is apparently only one of several inquiries into theft at the library, where it was recently reported that over 30,000 items have gone missing. That’ll teach them to mess with le Google …

Has anybody heard about this John Twelve Hawks guy? According to his official biography, he lives off the grid and only speaks to his publisher via untraceable cell phone.

I don’t usually follow the fantasy/sci-fi genre, but I have to admit I find this biographical concept (or conceit) intriguing. A few great writers have lived off the grid (Rimbaud and Thoreau come to mind). Anybody else know anything about this disconnected author, or has anyone read the book?

It’s time for book critics to stop beating up on Michael Cunningham, famed author of “The Hours” whose new “Specimen Days” is apparently just not working for anybody.

First, this eagerly awaited novel got trashed in the regular Times book section for trying to recreate the success of “The Hours” with Walt Whitman in the Virginia Woolf slot. The book has since been the subject of much industry buzz about how a big author can screw up.

Now the New York Times Sunday Book …

I’m glad we got into a small debate about this show last week. Some people like Def Poetry a lot, some people hate it, and you can’t get very far into a discussion of this topic without revealing surprisingly vast rifts between what each of us believe the word “poetry” to mean.

There’s one important point I’d like to emphasize here, though. Def Poetry is the only poetry series on any major television outlet. You can flip through every one …

A couple of years ago, my kids showed me a website called Neopets.com where they create free membernames, adopt weird little animated virtual alien-pets, and communicate with other owners of weird little animated virtual alien-pets.

It seemed like a pretty dicey concept to me, and I didn’t really see what was so great about it. That was a couple of years ago — now, 25 million members later, Neopets is being bought by MTV and MTV’s parent company, Viacom. The two …

POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET: Words, words, words.
(William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2:2:191-192)

Ah, I love quoting Shakespeare in the morning. Or something. The truth is, I’ve always liked this little exchange in Hamlet, precisely because the prince’s answer is one that never happens.

If I were to ask you what you’re reading, you’d probably tell me the name of a book, or perhaps something of the plot. Maybe you’d give me an author’s name, and you might mention how it’s …