– What would Jack London think? From the Associated Press:

Good news for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains: They no longer need federal protection. The bad news for the animals? Plans are already in the works to hunt them.

The Federal government, through the Endangered Species Act, seeks to reduce the gray wolf population from roughly 1,500 to a more manageable 900-1,250. Read the whole travesty here.

– Hemingway’s Shotgun received a nice bump in traffic and submissions via The Guild of Outsider Writers. Thanks, Marissa!

– “It’s hell to die ugly as this.” John Rocco pays poetic tribute to Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest.

– You’d think the world was ending. I just don’t get the hyperbolic emotion and handwringing over the closing of Dutton’s Books in Brentwood. Ericka Schickel writes at Native Intelligence:

And suddenly I burst into tears. I sobbed and bawled and gulped and drove.

I am over-emotional about this, I know. But see, the world used to brim with places like Dutton’s. Growing up in New York in the 70’s, there were still plenty of places like Dutton’s, not just bookstores, but businesses that were as unique as the people who owned them. People who genuinely cared about the customer and the product and not just the bottom line. Places where you could get your dry cleaning, your meat, your shoes repaired and it was part of your authentic life. At Dutton’s you were never a “consumer,” you were a “reader” a person with value that exceeded your credit limit.

Independent book sellers like Dutton’s have been on the endangered species list since the advent of the Internet. Times change and so does commerce. Personally, I love purchasing my literature through online vendors like Amazon and Powell’s. Why? Because I can go to the individual page for each book and peruse reviews from readers and critics, for one thing, allowing me to make a more educated guess about whether or not I want to add that particular title to my burgeoning collection. Amazon also makes some pretty sound recommendations based on your buying habits. I’ve been introduced to some damn fine novels and authors I might otherwsie have overlooked if not for Amazon’s suggestions.

– Coming Through Slaughter Redux. There once was a scorned woman who asserted that she had reclaimed her life, after spinning events to her satisfaction, and moved on. Well … not so fast, Kemo Sabe. Now, Josephine Gillis is wishing death upon her ex. Few things are sadder, wrote Nathanael West, than the truly monstrous.