• Books carved with surgical tools. 
• Related: “I’m sure what I did was completely blasphemous, but y’all … it turned out really cool.” Wallpapering with Faulkner. (His pages, not him.)
• How many copies need to move to qualify a book as an Amazon bestseller? PWdoes the math and finds: not that many. 
• Speaking of inflation! In the UK, the sinister-sounding “inflation basket” indicates that people are buying more e-books, less champagne. 
• “These are fundamentally probing, even discomfiting, books.” Meghan O’Rourke pays tribute to Renata Adler.