The Millions

A newly released Roald Dahl collection, The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets, includes a secret ending to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and excerpts from the author’s hilariously bad report cards. Wrote one teacher about Dahl in 1931: “A persistent muddler. Vocabulary negligible, sentences malconstructed. He reminds me of a camel.” (via Galley Cat)

From Granta, we learn that Kazuo Ishiguro likes to go by “Ish.”

The New York Times reports on the launch of Neal Stephenson’s new serialized digital novel, The Mongoliad, complete with video, music, and user-profiles. (via AuthorScoop)

The Washington Post’s Ron Charles takes the art of book reviewing to video in a humorous and thoughtful review of  Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. (via Galleycat)

Steve Almond at The Rumpus provides a “meditation on editors, ambition, and angry dependence” in reaction to the media’s coverage of the suicide of Kevin Morrissey, managing editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review.

Celebrate the 2010 Melbourne Literary Festival–going on now through September 5th–by watching this funny promo video, “10 Facts about Books That You Won’t Read in a Book About Books”.

Happy Freedom Day: The work at the center of all the reviews, magazine covers, and even, of course, controversy, has arrived. Jonathan Franzen’s long-awaited novel Freedom hits shelves today. Our review. Also out today is Booker longlister Skippy Dies by Paul Murray. Another newly translated Roberto Bolaño is out, The Insufferable Gaucho. As is You Were Wrong by Jamestown author Matthew Sharpe. Finally, fashion fans will dig vintage Japanese prepster handbook Take Ivy.

As if the ebook juggernaut didn’t already have enough steam behind it, The Washington Post says that, “perusing electronically will lighten your environmental impact.” You see, “every time you download and read an electronic book, rather than purchasing a new pile of paper, you’re paying back a little bit of the carbon dioxide and water deficit from the Kindle production process.”

Letters of Note posts Thomas Pynchon’s letter to his British publisher defending Ian McEwan from plagiarism accusations regarding Atonement.

At Tin House, an excerpt from A.N. Devers’ essay on pilgrimages to the homes of impoverished writers, including references to Edgar Allen Poe’s Baltimore house on The Wire.

The Boston Globe interviews Andrew Pettegree, author of The Book in the Renaissance, on how no one had any idea how to sell the first printed books. (via Book Bench)

Japanese director Satoshi Kon died last Tuesday at the age of 46. His last words, a rambling text that his family uploaded to the Internet following his death, have just been translated to English: “Everyone, thank you for all the truly great memories. I loved the world I lived in.”