It’s amazing how quickly the articles begin to accumulate in your RSS reader. Forget about them for a few hours and they begin to multiply like bunnies on amyl nitrate.

Some mid-week highlights for us include:

The New York Times has two articles of interest, the first concerns hopes the city of Rome has that Hollywood’s next Dan Brown adaptation Angels & Demons (Pocket MM 9781416524793 $9.99) will line their coffers with some of that sweet, sweet Da Vinci lucre. The Vatican, of course, has a contrary view of the blasphemous bestseller.

The second Times article covers the surprise success of Christian bestseller The Shack (Windblown TP 9780964729230 $14.99). It seems that part of the book’s success is due to readers buying multiple copies to give as gifts to friends and family.

Your humble correspondent hasn’t read The Shack yet, but my guess is that the last page reads along the lines of “if you want your prayer to come true, send copies of this book to at least a dozen of your friends”. Not that there is anything wrong with this. As Richard Dawkins was purported to have said after a dozen Sea Breezes “I may not believe in God, but I believe in covering my ass”.

If you’re geeky enough to enjoy cover art of the same book from around the world, check out io9, which for no good reason has a feature on the variety of international covers for H.G. Wells War of the Worlds.

Also running on io9 is Twelve Books You Should Read at the Beach This Summer. To be sure, it’s an eclectic list, with an eye towards the future; listing the newest by Charles Stross Saturn’s Children (Ace HC 9780441015948 $24.95), which is due out next week.

Stross is a science fiction writer for readers who don’t usually like the genre. If there is any justice in the world, this guy would be selling at least Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon) numbers.

If you live near LA, and got a ticket to see David Sedaris at Vroman’s Bookstore this Sunday, consider yourself lucky. Poor Pinky, blogging at the LA Times, is outside looking in. Credit where credit is due, Vroman’s has posted a podcast with Sedaris here. While you’re checking out this article, scroll down and check out the video of Patti Smith on the BBC’s Old Gray Whistle Test circa 1976.

Last, but not least, Kassia Krozser, blogging at Booksquare, argues the case that publishers should blog. While she makes some interesting points, one thing Krozser doesn’t take into account is how many times this is taken care of by the authors themselves. Or at least some authors are big enough to have official fan-operated websites that are fueled by the cheap energy of slavish devotion.

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Today the DVD of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis was released, and increased demand for her acclaimed graphic novel The Complete Persepolis (Pantheon TP 9780375714832 $24.95) is definitely a possibility once this starts churning through everybody’s Netflix queue.

Continuing in the graphic vein, this weekend will see the release of the film Wanted, based on Mark Miliar’s graphic novel (Top Cow TP 9781582404974 $19.99). The film stars Angelina Jolie and is the American debut of Russian director Timur Bekmanbetov. If his name doesn’t ring any bells, he directed the films Night Watch and Day Watch. His films make for incredible eye candy and a 83% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes means this could be the sleeper hit of the summer.

Finally, we come to Pixar’s latest cash cow Wall E. Do you really need to know what it’s about? Tragically, every publisher and their mother has decided to put out tie-in editions. However, there are two standout books of value to the young and the young at heart:

Wall E: The Intergalactic Guide (DK HC 9780756638405 $12.99)

The Art of Wall E (Chronicle HC 9780811862356 $40.00)

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What is it with teenage fantasy authors and hyperbole? A few years ago, Christopher Paolini was being touted as the next J.K. Rowling (albeit with a Y chromosome). Now, the media is latching onto 19-year-old Catherine Banner and her book The Eyes of a King (Random House HC 9780375838750 $16.99). Most recently, the New York Post helped her publicist earn her keep by running a story.

This book hasn’t yet set the children’s book world ablaze, being vastly overshadowed by the vampire angst of Stephenie Meyer. Currently, it is hovering at 3,500 on Amazon, with only a single customer review.

It’s hard to tell if the lack of enthusiasm is due to Rowling fatigue, or customers have wised up to the fact that calling somebody the next anything is a loaded proposition guaranteed to erode your credibility quicker than you can say muggle.

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The LA Times is reporting that National Book Award winner Denis Johnson’s new book Nobody Move will be serialized in Playboy over the next four issues, with the first installment on newsstands now.

No worries for folks who don’t want to have to utter the words “I’m getting it for the articles (or in this case, the fiction)”, as the paper’s book blog will be covering each installment as it is released. Here, they discuss part one.

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Comedian and author George Carlin passed away on Sunday at the age of 71. A tireless advocate for freedom of speech, Carlin was a friend to booksellers. From appearances at BEA to authoring bestselling books like Napalm & Silly Putty and When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops, Carlin contributed mightily to our vocation.

He was also one of the few comedians who not only got better with age, but also more relevant.

Many of Carlin’s associates have been on the air eulogizing their late friend, but the best tribute of all is on salon.com, which reposted an interview with Carlin from earlier this year. Interviewer Heather Havrilesky asks the right questions, and Carlin proves himself to be an ever eloquent raconteur, with his blistering powers of observation sharper than ever. His own words do a far better job of illustrating this loss better than any Comedy Store veteran.

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This past weekend, Oprah Winfrey delivered the commencement address to Stanford’s class of 2008. But graduates received more than just the usual aphorisms about the hard work and setting out in the world, they also received copies of her latest book club selection Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth (Penguin TP 9780452289963 $14.00), along with Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind (Riverhead TP 978154481710 $15.00).

A random sampling of graduates interviewed commented that they were going to sell their books and donate the money to somebody named Sallie Mae. Whoever she is, there sure are a lot of people thinking about her.

BTW, we swiped Oprah’s picture from The Huffington Post because the ones on Reuters were really bad.

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Lately it seems that Amazon has been using its patented 1-Click ordering system as a club to pummel publishers large and small into submission. The first salvo was launched a few months back, when they announced that they were going to disable 1-Click ordering on POD publishers that didn’t source their printing to Amazon-owned Booksurge.

But more recently, Amazon has escalated their aggression, cutting off Hachette titles from 1-Click ordering in the UK. The New York Times covers the latest skirmish here.

But the unasked question is this: are publishers so worried that customers who can’t purchase books with the single click of a mouse will decide to do without? As if taking the extra thirty seconds to navigate Amazon’s site would be a deal breaker?

This is only the beginning, folks. It’s not that we’re against Amazon staying in business, but if their share of the marketplace is such (according to the article, they control 16 percent of the UK market) that they can force publishers to kowtow to their every whim,  what will the future hold? How far away are we from some A-list author producing a book exclusively for the Kindle?

Even more odd: why was this article buried in the Media & Advertising section of the Times, instead of either the Business or the Books sections?

At the end of the day, I’m sure there is some calculus that Hachette will use to determine if losing 1-Click will cost them more than giving Amazon what they want. But, while it seems silly that Amazon is using 1-Click as a carrot or a club with publishers, it is possible that this will stand as some kind of litmus test as to how far they can throw their weight around in the future on much bigger issues.

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We feel your pain: It’s Friday, you’ve survived another week, which doesn’t mean much if you have to work tomorrow and Sunday. You’re in the office, you’ve finished all the projects you were working on, but it’s too early to pack up and go home.

Worry no longer. Here are some fun, work-related links to ease you into the weekend.

The LA Times has a cool interview with Scott Pilgrim author/illustrator Bryan Lee O’Malley. He spends a lot of time discussing both his popular graphic novel series and its upcoming film adaptation starring Michael Cera (Arrested Development and Juno). O’Malley runs a pretty tidy blog himself, which is how we came across this.

Over at Paper Cuts (The New York Times Book Blog), William Gibson offers readers his most recent playlist. Funny thing is, there isn’t a single song that invokes a cyber-dystopia where hackers run amok unabated.

Lit-types have had a number of good reasons to dislike pseudo-memoirist-turned-novelist James Frey for a long time, but few have addressed his shortcomings as eloquently as The New Republic’s Ruth Franklin. In her review of Bright Shiny Morning, she fillets the author and his pretensions, declaring the book “maddening and cliche-ridden”. (via The Elegant Variation)

Over at io9, one of our favorite sci-fi blogs, they ponder Six Astounding Young Adult Novels of the Pre-Potter Era. The article (and the vintage covers) is interesting, but not as interesting as the fact that, as one commenter noted, none of the titles mentioned are available via Amazon’s Kindle.

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There are a lot of rumors floating around the Internet claiming that Edward Norton, who usually has such cordial relationships with the directors he works with (/sarcasm), has been a bit difficult during the making and post-production of aspiring summer blockbuster The Incredible Hulk. If Eddie N. doesn’t hustle his buns and promote this movie, that will only lend credence to the gossip.

Regardless, this flick will make a ton of cash this weekend, and you can be ready for the onslaught of fanboys, and find yourself rolling in the green, with the following titles:

The Incredible Hulk-Novelization (Del Rey MM 9780345506993 $7.99)

The Incredible Hulk-Juvenile Adaptation (Simon TP 9781416960843 $5.99)

And, while this isn’t on sale yet, can we be bold as to recommend backordering The Incredible Hulk Omnibus (Marvel HC 9780785129387 $99.99). Yes, it’s a bit pricey, but this faithfully reproduces all of the Hulk’s early exploits, in all of their original Silver Age glory, right down to the original letters pages.

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There is a piece in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly decrying the glut of superhero films: not just this summer, but in general. The writer is approaching the subject as somebody who never really liked comic books in the first place, and this puts him at a slight disadvantage. While the article lacks any real critical analysis (instead relying on ad hominem attacks and tepid sarcasm), it does raise an interesting point of view.

Moviegoers have devoured Iron Man, but will they do the same with The Incredible Hulk (opening this Friday), Hellboy II (opening July 11th) and The Dark Knight (opening a week later on July 18th)? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to say ‘duh!’. All of these movies will rake in a ton of cash before Labor Day, much to the dismay of the contrarian at EW.

So why bring this up at all? Well the target audience of these films are what we in the bookselling business would call ‘reluctant readers’. So, while we can set up big displays of graphic novel tie-ins like we usually do, why not go out of our way to feature a quality novel on this very subject; one that not only mines the usual tropes of the genre, but satirizes them with Swift-like verve?

Austin Grossman’s debut novel Soon I Will Be Invincible (Vintage TP 9780307279866 $14.95) is a note-perfect parody of the entire notion of super powered beings and a perfect summer read. The wonderful Chip Kidd-designed cover is icing on the cake.

Adventurous booksellers should try featuring/shelving this book along with their graphic novels. Take it out of fiction, give it a nice shelf-talker, and watch it fly out the door.

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