1. Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, which has already been made into a good Paul Newman movie, is being performed onstage before a hometown crowd at Portland Center Stage in Oregon. I wish I could catch it, and if it travels to New York I certainly will catch it.

There’s also word that director Gus Van Sant is making progress on his film version of the Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a classic non-fiction text that describes the mid-1960s …

I’m taking a break from the Review Review today. I’ve gotten some feedback that I’ve been phoning it in lately, and I guess I have to agree. A week’s reprieve should help me locate my lost sense of purpose.

But I’ll be back for the first issue of April next weekend, and I’m sure I’ll be my usual pithy self again by then. Meanwhile, check out the NYTBR’s Paper Cuts blog, which really has gotten livelier since they’ve opened it …

1. One in ten Brits cheat on classic novels because they just watch the movies instead.

2. In similar news (if it counts as news), there’s this article, which is good for a laugh. You know what I’d really like to see? Danielle Steel’s Moby-Dick.

3. Blast from the past: the Goosebumps series is coming back.

4. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then It’s Complicated could be a novel about adolescence.

5. Did Coleridge translate Goethe? Or didn’t he? Instead …

1. I’ve been worried about HBO ever since Sopranos went away (and Flight of the Conchords has done nothing to assauge my concerns). But I like their new mini-series John Adams, based on the book by David McCullough. Paul Giamatti does a great job of inhabiting the main role. Episode 2 is especially enjoyable since it features all the scenes and characters from 1776, but without the songs.

2. I’m going to be in a panel discussion on …

As Dan Green elegantly announced last week, the Litblog Co-op has decided to disband. I hope I’m not breaking any oath of secrecy if I reveal that the group made this decision peacefully, and with only a few half-hearted attempts to hold together the union. I’m glad we’re going out with resolve and dignity.

(We’re also going out quietly — in fact, we agreed to disband over two months ago, and the fact that it took this long for one of …

David Kamp, considering Sarah Boxer’s Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review, wisely zeroes in on the same problem I have with this book. Noting that Boxer says an editor gave her the idea for this book and that she originally considered it a dreadful idea, he finds the book “too preoccupied with being respectably booky rather than wildly bloggy” and discovers “a nose-holding quality to her introduction”. He asks:

Shouldn’t a person editing …

1. PEN World Voices, easily the best ongoing literary festival in New York City, will take place from April 29 to May 4 this year. Writers I’m particularly interested in seeing include, alphabetically: Andre Aciman, Charles Baxter, Andy Borowitz, Ian Baruma, Peter Carey, Stacey D’Erasmo, Umberto Eco, Jennifer Egan, Deborah Eisenberg, Asli Erdogan, Peter Esterhazy, Jeffrey Eugenides, John Giorno, Arnon Grunberg, John Wesley Harding, Alexsandar Hemon,

1. Carolyn “Pinky” Kellogg is in Istanbul! Nice to see a busy blogger getting away for a literary journey.

2. Arthur C. Clarke has died. I mainly know of Clarke for living in Sri Lanka (and reporting from there during the 2004 tsunami) and for co-writing an amazingly great movie with Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ve also read the original Arthur C. Clarke short story that inspired this movie, “The Sentinel”. This humble story …

French film maker Philippe Ramos has recently released a film titled Capitaine Achab (Captain Ahab). It’s the story of Herman Melville’s obsessed sea captain, from the time he was a young boy until his last, fatal meeting with Moby Dick. The film won the FIPRESCI prize at the 60th annual Locarno (Switzerland) film festival. FIPRESCI is the Federation Internationale de la Presse Cinematographique or International Federation of Film Critics.

Ramos’ idea is interesting: imagine — and fill in the gaps …

This has nothing to do with anything, but Richard Price’s face cracks me up. You can see this weary visage on the cover of today’s New York Times Book Review (which has recently begun running edgy, artistic author photos on its cover, a refreshing change from the usual diagrammatic illustrations). Price is not a good looking guy, but everybody seems to love his new Lush Life, and reviewer Walter Kirn tries to honor the book by example, unleashing a torrent of …