Some random links: Cellphone books, Michael Chabon and the Coen Brothers

Easy reading: I’m waiting for the bus; I’m waiting to pick up kids. I get a hankering to read a little something. DailyLit is an e-book service site that provides "chunks of books" in five-minute segments (most customers prefer 2-3 minute segments) on your crackberry, iphone or PDA via email or RSS feed. "Anna Karenina," "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and 798 other books are available on a pay-per-read basis. "Dracula," for example, comes in 187 installments. If you receive one a day, five days a week, it’ll take you 37 weeks to read it. DailyLit just signed a deal with Berlitz--the Spanish language course, for instance, has 90 installments. The course costs $6.95. Armchair, fireplace, slippers apparently not included.

Susan Reynolds

Next up for the Coen Brothers: How lucky Cormac McCarthy was to have this filmmaking team realize his story "No Country for Old Men" in celluloid. And how lucky Michael Chabon is going to be, when the brothers begin filming "The Yiddish Policemen's Union." That's what the Guardian is reporting today; the pair have decided to adapt and direct Chabon's story, which imagines a world where Jewish refugees find a homeland in Alaska, not the Middle East. The story's thriller aspect (Meyer Landsman, the main character, is a detective trying to solve a murder) no doubt also appealed to the brothers, who have delved into the noirish realms many times before.

Nick Owchar