• Lindsay Gibbs’s Titanic: The Tennis Story recounts how tennis players and Titanic passengers Dick Williams and Karl Behr met on a rescue ship and went on to become Davis Cup partners—as historical fiction. Unfortunately, the subjects’ descendants aren’t thrilled about the novel, particularly by the fact that the launch party will be sponsored by Iceberg Vodka. The words in poor taste were bandied.
• Snoop Dogg has released a smokable book. That is all.
• “The first time I went to [the British National Science Fiction Convention], all I could see was a sea of white, male faces … I found it very disheartening, and I knew I could either go away and never go to another con or try to do something about it.”
• After writing a poem critical of Israel, Günter Grass has been banned by that country’s Interior Minister.
• In honor of the Mets’ fiftieth, you can get e-versions of Jimmy Breslin’s Queens-centric classics.
• In honor of the Mets’ sweep, you can read The Paris Review interview with die-hard Mets fan P. G. Wodehouse.
• Cartoonist Christoph Niemann draws the books on his nightstand.