HarperCollins Canada has launched a blog/contest called March Mystery Madness:

We're hoping that everyone finds March Mystery Madness blog worthy. It's a massive, really fun online event we're running over the next six weeks: 64 books, 4 conferences, tonnes of "games," and one ultimate winner. Essentially, it's the NCAA basketball tournament only with mystery books.

Battling mystery titles, hype, games and the chance to win 65 great mystery novels. What's not to love?

Link to March Mystery Madness

Thanks, Ragdoll

Bookman Beattie points to the Times pronouncement of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. These lists are always interesting, and most people disagree with them.

The top ten, as per the Times:
1. Philip Larkin
2. George Orwell
3. William Golding
4. Ted Hughes
5. Doris Lessing
6. J. R. R. Tolkien
7. V. S. Naipaul
8. Muriel Spark
9. Kingsley Amis
10. Angela Carter

Anyone care to weigh in on the 10 greatest Canadian writers since 1945?

Penguins, Toni Morrison and Harry Potter most challenged books of 2006

Topping the list was And Tango Makes Three, a tale of two male penguins parenting an egg from a mixed-sex penguin. Toni Morrison's novels Beloved and The Bluest Eye also made the list, but the most challenged books of the 21st century remain J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels