I'm off to the London Book Fair today (meetings). I'm actually rather looking forward to it. Having retired from bookselling for the moment, I am not there to frantically work so will simply have the pleasure of moseying around looking at what is on offer from the various publishers. Much more fun.

So, just a few items to keep you amused:

The Orange Prize shortlist for 2007 has been announced:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun (yay!)
Rachel Cusk - Arlington Park
Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
Jane Harris - The Observations
Anne Tyler - Digging to America - Chatto & Windus

Alexander McCall Smith talks about his first house in Botswana.

Oh, for more booksellers like these! Matthew Crockatt and Adam Powell of the lovely independent bookshop Crockatt & Powell discuss the UK booktrade:

For us the idea of a bookshop is that your hardcore customers, the ones who keep you alive, who buy 50-100 books a year, they want to come in, chat to us about books, see books they haven't seen before - they want to feel like their passion about books is being reciprocated. (Copyright David Teather, THE GUARDIAN)

And lastly, Pascal Wyse in the Guardian Weekend magazine has a little piece called "Wyse Words" which always reminds me somewhat of THE MEANING OF LIFF by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd. On Saturday his definition was:

Refleshment The reserve spurt of energy that joggers deploy when passing someone sexy, even though they're so exhausted they could throw up their own heart. Body language is transformed from flailing sweatbox to "I'm fit - and so are you, baby. Let's work out." Once safely out of sight, they fall over.

Excellent. I've just recently rejoined my local gym. Oh so familiar.

You've still got until Friday to put your names in the hat for a free copy of Fadiman's EX LIBRIS.