[07.24.06]—Coming Up: Margin contributor and poet Katherine Grace Bond reads from her latest collection, Considering Flight. To be held at the P&G Cafe, 15614 Main St., Duvall, WA. Open mic at 6p; featured reader at 7p. Info: email

CELEBRITY NEWS

[07.24.06]—from The Independent—Daniel Howden is taken on a tour of Gaboland, led by none other than Jaime Garcia Marquez, the Nobel laureate's younger brother. "The Portal de los Dulces, one of Cartagena's favourite meeting points, has changed little in the last 100 years; the characters are just where Gabriel Garcia Marquez left them."

[07.20.06]—from Dialogic—Franz Kafka: "I Write Differently... I write differently from the way I speak, I speak differently from the way I think, I think differently from the way I should think—and so it goes on into the darkest depths of infinity."—(Letter to Ottla, July 10, 1914)

[07.20.06]—reported in The Elegant Variation: Australian magical realist Peter Carey appears in the latest edition of Paris Review. Get your copy

BOOKS

[07.19.06]—Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann (Pantheon: November 2006)—Writes Luke Harding in Strasbourg for the Guardian Unlimited: "Increasingly, it seems, young German writers are no longer looking to Thomas Mann and Grass for inspiration, or studying the theories of Theodor Adorno. … Instead, they are looking to Anglo-Saxon fiction and Spanish magic realism. Kehlmann—who studied German literature and philosophy at university, publishing his first novel at 22—spent his teens reading Nabokov and Borges. He likes British writers including Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan."

[07.19.06]—On the Midwest Booksellers Association and the Great Lakes Booksellers Association bestsellers list for the week of July 16: FOR TRADE PAPERBACK FICTION: #5, The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin); #9, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (Vintage); #12, Saturday by Ian McEwan (Anchor); #15, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (Mariner); FOR CHILDREN'S TITLES: #15, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick)

MIXED MEDIA

[07.21.06]—The Brothers Grimm—Writes Bryan Reesman for Premiere—"Grimm is well cast, features dazzling effects, and incorporates the magical realism and antiauthoritarianism that are trademarks of Gilliam's œuvre, although that combination is not as potent as usual here." With director Terry Gilliam and writer Ehren Kruger.

[07.20.06]—Cloud Tectonics—Writes Neil Genzlinger for The New York Times—"The playwright doesn’t have quite enough here to be worthy of a full-length work (this production runs 100 intermissionless minutes), but the piece builds to a lovely concluding thought about love over a lifetime. Helping immensely the whole way is some striking lighting by Paul Hackenmueller, who does quite a lot with not very much." With director James Phillip Gates; based on Jose Rivera magical realist novel of the same title; runs through August 5 at the Culture Project, 45 Bleecker Street, East Village, NYC. For more info: (212) 868-4444.

A LITTLE LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING…

YOU MAY NOTICE: We'll be experimenting with the format and frequency of this newsblog over the next few weeks. Let us know if something works well or doesn't work at all. We're here to serve you.

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GENTLE REMINDER: Margin's staff is on hiatus through mid-October 2006. Any e-mail we receive during this time will receive replies as necessary, but there may be delays due to pool parties, novel revision, rib festivals or stargazing.