Despite the recent firebombing of its Islington HQ, Gibson Square announced today that they intend to continue with publication of The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones. The book, concerning the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad's first wife A'isha, was initially snapped up by Random House before they backed out following a storm of controversy, largely spun by University of Texas professor Denise Spellberg. who stoked fears that employees could be the victims......

The book grocer returns from August hiatus to find all kinds of lovely literary events with which to fill up our diary for September. And having remembered a lesson or two from primary school (beer before liquor, never sicker? No, not that one), we share them with you below. Tuesday: Want some explication of Red State America? Joe Bageant will be at the Southbank Centre to discuss his book, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Guns,......

In a wide-ranging interview on Monday, Time Out founder and publisher Tony Elliot revealed that the magazine could become a freesheet. Speaking to Media Guardian, Elliot suggested the weekly listings title is considering reducing the print edition to a slim, freely distributed edition and moving the bulk of its content online. While Time Out may be less essential than during its rabble-rousing heyday (currently celebrated in an exhibition in the Museum of London's foyer), the......

Summer, our fickle friend – are you going to cooperate with us now? No more depriving us of our fun in the sun, our picnics, our tans, our leisurely strolls through parks and convivial afternoons spent barbequing? Because if not, look at all the other lovely things we have to keep us busy. Like books. Books don’t require that every time we go out, we bring both hot- and cold-weather clothing, both umbrella and......

Diaries out, bibliophiles. Festival season is almost upon us. No, not the festival season that will have you rolling around in mud or throwing your pants at the stage (well, you could throw your pants at the stage, and we’d certainly provide moral support for that endeavour). We’re talking literary festival season – Christmas in July for the book geeks among us. Let’s start with the little guy first. London Lit Plus launched just......

Is it just your imagination, or is Londonist going all literary on you for the second time today? No, it’s true: we’re just that geeky. But if the Bard’s birthday bash doesn’t have you all hot and bothered this week (speaketh it softly, or surrender thine literati creds), here are a few alternatives to keep you otherwise engaged. Tuesday: If you haven’t booked already, there are still a few seats left to hear Isabel......

The book grocer’s coffers are chockfull of goodies this week, so let’s jump right in and get shopping... Monday: Crikey. Take a look at author and critic George Steiner’s publishing credits and you have to wonder whether the man has actually slept in the past fifty years. Yet the premise of the prolific writer’s most recent work, My Unwritten Books, is that there are actually some subjects that Steiner has purposely left unexplored. Join......

If so, you’re probably better poised than we are to win a contest kicking off today. So listen up artists, armchair critics, and wannabe designers: HarperCollins, in collaboration with the Saatchi Gallery, are sponsoring a competition to design a book cover for the forthcoming The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal, Sean Dixon’s debut novel. To all our artsy readers: opportunity knocks (though we’re not making any claims about fame and fortune). The collaboration......

Every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... If you collected the specially commissioned posters from TfL then it's likely you'll fancy this book. Platform for Art: Art on the Underground cunningly......

After a 2-month hiatus spent reading Finnegans Wake (alright, would you believe rubbish romance novels?), The Book Grocer returns, with a continually evolving format and its diary stuffed full with book-ish events. Here are our picks for the week: Tuesday: Anne Sebba, author of Jennie Churchill, Winston’s American Mother, in conversation with Hugh Whitemore, playwright and writer of the Emmy-award winning Winston Churchill drama The Gathering Storm, at Waterstone’s Notting Hill Gate store, 7pm,......

Just a quick shout-out to announce an upcoming bloggers get-together. The event takes place on 27 November at the Camel and Artichoke, Waterloo. It’s following that simple yet winning formula: get some interesting people in a pub and have some beers. Londonist will be there. The group is still fairly small, but keen to grow into a regular social for all us hard-grafting denizens of e-Grub Street. It’s organised by Dan Bower of We Love......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

. Catherine Bullen is just finishing her studies at Cambridge School of Art. Her final show is being exhibited at Free Range 2007. Londonist has a cup of tea and a chat with her to find out what it's all about. What should Londonist readers know about your work, Catherine? I try to base my work around issues that effect me personally or the world in general, drawing inspiration from news stories and personal experience.......

Call for new writers. Londonist is a collaborative blog, which means we're always seeking out new additions to our team. Unfortunately we can't pay our contributors because any money we do make from advertising etc generally gets ploughed right back into the site. However, there are a number of benefits to writing for Londonist, so here are a few of the obvious ones: It's good experience and good exposure. After all, thousands of people will......

This Day In London’s History 1825: The Grosvenor Canal is opened. In 1723 the Chelsea Waterworks were constructed to supply water for parts of West London. Part of these works included a small tidal inlet on the Thames, just east of Chelsea Bridge, which became the entrance to a canal that ran about a mile to Grosvenor Basin (where Victoria Station currently resides). The Grosvenor Canal was opened on 5th March 1825 and was......

Book signings are not one of our favourite things. Queue for half an hour – bored – considering what you’ll say to the author; panic, say something platitudinous, receive a banal reply, gratefully accept a misspelled dedication in an illegible hand; go home and gloat to unimpressed flat mates. On Thursday, this lethargic PR-as-event format gets a novel respray. Freedom Press, Whitechapel, plays host to Hugo Martinez, compiler of Graffiti NYC. You won’t have......

Chris Roberts (not pictured) is a man of many talents. He's traced the origins of nursery rhymes, surveyed London's bridges and even written a musical about Margaret Thatcher. And then there's the Evening Standard random headline generator. Most recently of all, he took us on a walk around the Pool of London. His latest project, One Eye Grey (available at not enough good bookshops), is the first penny dreadful for over a hundred years......

Anyone walking past Holborn Tube is sure to have all kinds of leaflet thrust upon them. But if you were passing by last Friday, you might have ended up with something worthwhile. A group of postgrads from St Martin's have put together a handy map of zone 1 showing just how short the distances are between stations. The idea is to encourage more people to walk, rather than take public transport, and thus do......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

The Londonist Literary List appears (almost) every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. STOP THE PRESS: We have a late edition to the list, "Golden Handcuffs - Scandals, Drugs & Lies" by Polly Courtney is being launched on Thursday 12 - 2pm and promises "A cynical, gritty look at what it really means to sell your soul to the city." D202, St. Clements Building, London School......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Tonight Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award way back in 2003, discusses his writing and latest book A Spot of Bother. £8.50 at the Royal Festival Hall, 7:45 pm in the Purcell Room, find out more. Kevin McCloud......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. You’ll have to forgive this week’s list for being so slight, all the cool literati types are on holiday, it’s only the hacks like us that have to keep plugging away... Thursday One of Africa's greatest writers, exiled from Kenya for 22 years because of his highly political and acclaimed work including the bestselling......

We seem to recall that a few years ago a tabloid newspaper published the results of a dodgy survey, claiming that the main reasons for non-Londoners not wanting to move to London were (1) house prices, (2) crime and (3) the tube. We were quite annoyed at the time, feeling that the tube deserved the number one spot without a doubt. Anyway, if any proof were needed that the tabloids love publishing the results......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Wednesday If know your manga from your anime, your Akira from your Ghost in the Shell, tonight's Tokyopop Manga looks set to draw a dedicated fan-crowd with an evening of music, film and art, including a masterclass and competitions, at the Foyles Gallery, 6.30pm. Tickets are free, but reserve yours by emailing mangaATfoyles.co.uk. The......

As my copy of 'The Eraser' still hasn't arrived from Amazon I've been trying to distract myself with other things. Work, seeing friends, and other bands...ironically what's been very successfully distracting me is Muse's brand new album 'Black Holes and Revelations'. Ironic because of all the lazy comparisons between Radiohead and Muse over the years and ironic because they're nothing like each other. I never really understood that comparison aside from the fact that......

Just a quick note to say sorry for the lack of posts today. Something went awry with the server which hosts our publishing system so we had a bit of a nightmare. We'll make it up to you tomorrow, promise.......

Is just one of many things more important than the World Cup. This vital bit of information was made public after Boing Boing received a silly letter warning them not to stream any football matches illegally on their website. Baker & McKenzie LLP can't use the Internet very much if they thought there was any danger of that happening: Oh brother. I don't even know what the FIFA World Cup is. I'm guessing it's soccer,......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. It's all about the Indies this week, with an event by a publishing house, a literary magazine, and a Bookslammer rounding out the highlighted events below... That said, we 'd like to use this space to appeal to Waterstone's, that ubiquitous chain, to start putting more thought and effort into hosting quality readings and......

It's the ultimate nightmare for the dedicated tube reader: you find a seat, reach into your bag and discover to your horror that you've gone and left your book on the kitchen table. Now you're going to have to repeatedly read the adverts for the next half-an-hour or (as a very last resort) glance at the abandoned copy of the Metro left on the seat next to you. As of this Friday however there......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. It's a good week -- Macmillan is pledging to publish unknown authors, Peter Akroyd is making an appearance (even though he's presumably the sidekick in this particular show), we've got a new Victorian novel (and you can never have enough of those), some Welsh poetry (which actually scares us a little bit), and a......