Whole lotta shaking in books

The longlist for the Man Booker Prize has been announced: a baker's dozen of must-read fiction for 2008.

In the tradition of the very dead diarist Samuel Pepys, George Orwell will start blogging Aug. 9.

Literary tattoos get no respect from Gawker.

We have lots of respect for Stephen King, whose new novel "N." is being accompanied by this animated episodic series, which began Monday.

The journey(s) of 1000 Journals are chronicled in a new documentary opening in San Francisco.

Independent online journal The Quarterly Conversation has a new look for its new issue.

The author tracking/stalking site Booktour.com has a new look too.

In honor of today's earthquake, an excerpt from "The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith" after the jump.

"The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith" by David Ulin (our books editor) was published in 2004.

We sit in restaurants, park in underground garages, work in colossal office towers cast on rollers designed to minimize the shaking, although, really, no one knows. We drive our cars, we put our kids to bed, we revel in the shimmering sunlight, all the while trying to ignore the strange stratified nature of the present, where our most mundane activities play out between the residue of past disasters and the promise of disaster coming back.

Carolyn Kellogg

photo of the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen by Chad K via Flickr