1. The e-book scene (also known as the d-book scene, if you read Booksquare) is buzzing again with news of Amazon's new iPhone Kindle application, which allows readers to enjoy the considerable benefits of the Kindle store without buying a bulky and expensive dedicated device.

Checking out debut novelist Ed Park's office-culture novel Personal Days, I was surprised to find it written in First Person Plural -- the same odd "we" voice that debut novelist Joshua Ferris chose for last year's hit office-culture novel Then We Came To The End. Does the "collective voice" have some special relevance for our age? Somehow it does seem to fit the cubicle mentality in Park's hands:

I'm not sure why I like reading Jay McInerney. He's a moderately popular novelist with a shallow intellectual range and a level-headed narrative tone, and yet I felt inexplicably excited to read his new The Good Life, which is about two married Manhattan couples before and after September 11, 2001. As I waded through the first chapters I wasn't sure why I was reading it at all.

I try to cover drama here on LitKicks, but the death of acclaimed playwright Wendy Wasserstein made me realize that I've never seen, read or heard a line of dialogue from any of her plays. In fact, having once served my time on Wall Street, I know more about her brother, the influential financier Bruce Wasserstein than I do about her.

T. C. Boyle has a new book out, Tooth and Claw. I read the title story in an anthology edited by Lorrie Moore, but I just couldn't share Lorrie Moore's excitement (in fact, I'd rather read Lorrie Moore). The story is about a lonely guy who adopts a large cat, not exactly tamed, with all the metaphors that implies. It was an amusing piece -- but one of the best of the year?

I'm planning to drop by Bret Easton Ellis's reading from Lunar Park at the Half King in NY City this evening. I'm not sure what I might say if the author takes questions from the crowd; I think I'll ask if, as I suspect, the character of Robert Miller was actually based on Venkman from "Ghostbusters".

Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park is more fun than any novel he's written before, and it's easy to see why it's become one of the hot books of the summer.

A satirical pseudo-autobiography as well as a creepy paranoid thriller, the book glides like a fast dream and keeps you in suspense, even though you won't care a bit about the well-being of any of its endangered characters. Everything still all adds up to less than zero in Ellis's world, and that's the way it's supposed to be.

Bret Easton Ellis's new novel/memoir Lunar Park is getting a lot of attention. I haven't read it yet, but I have been amused to peruse the famously fake websites created to introduce some of the supposedly but questionably real characters in this book.

As you may or may not know, a film version of the Douglas Adams classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is opening in theaters this weekend. I know this book remains a popular favorite among many, so I thought I'd ask what you think about it being adapted into film. Do you plan to see it? Why or why not? If you catch it this weekend, be sure to give us a short review.

But now, because I'm fond of changing the subject, I'm going to, uh, change the subject. Even though it's often like the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges, the subject of books on film is capable of spurring debate among devotees of each form. (No, really. It is.) But beyond that, I think we can all agree that there are some film adaptations that shouldn't have happened, like, ever. (The Scarlet Letter, anyone?) We can all agree on this, yes?