• “Want to lose a friend who’s a writer? Ask her, a month in, how it’s going. Better still, ask her to describe what she’s working on.” Mark Slouka explains the etiquette. 
• The great affect/effect problem.
• Libraries across Quebec are banding together to help rebuild the branch destroyed in the July Lac-Megantic oil-train derailment.
• “The rise of the belles-lettresestablishment, celebrating France’s literary culture, and even that of its neighbours, is the latest marketing sensation in the French capital, as hoteliers come up with ever more innovative—or desperate—ways to attract guests.” These include a Proust-themed hotel, a hostelry devoted to literary lovers, and a third containing an ominous-sounding Franz Kafka room. 
• The latest in long-overdue library books: an alumna returns a volume to her Michigan school library thirty-three years late, from Dubai.