It’s November and the weather has taken a turn for the dreary. In an effort to help everyone become a little more cheerful, here’s a light-hearted romp through this week’s literary news:

Museum ‘of story and storytelling’ planned for Oxford
An online dream touches down from the internet to reality– namely, into Rochester House in Oxford, mere blocks away from Christ Church College where many scenes from the recent Harry Potter movies were filmed. “There must be something in the waters of the Isis that gets into the system of Oxford residents, magically causing them to think of and bring to life unforgettable characters and plots,” said Oxfordshire-based children’s author Mary Hoffman.

–Literary Review’s 2009 Bad Sex in Fiction Prize Strikes Again. Prizes have not yet been chosen, but take a look at these excerpts (if you can stomach the prose!) and see which one gets your vote.

–Overdue library books return century and a half later, all fees paid. Speaking of due dates and late fees: imagine receiving a $1,000 bill from your library, fifty years later!

–“Tokyo Vice” Author Goes To Japan Seeking Enlightenment, Ends Up Writing About Organized Crime. Journalism teachers will tell you to follow the story wherever it leads. It led Jake Adelstein to be placed under police protection– but the story seems to be worth it.

–A dark and stormy night: and slightly better first sentences from new books. With a first sentence like “Of Filastro Agustín’s seven children, the only one he couldn’t bear to beat was his youngest son, Edmund,” how could it be bad?

–Neil Gaiman continues to wreck the grade curve for other fantasy writers. How do we love Gaiman’s new Graveyard Book? From the Newbery medal to the Locus young adult award and the Hugo best novel prize, to the longlisted for the Carnegie medal and shortlist for the World Fantasy award, in quite a number of ways. Gaiman says he was pleasantly surprised, though “the trouble with saying that is that you always sound vaguely insincere – people assume that with each award the book wins, saying you are surprised is less and less plausible.”

With so many awards under his belt, I wonder if Gaiman will wander off to sweep other genre’s prizes. Do you think he’s liable to branch out (and you thought your supremacy was safe, best-selling authors everywhere!)?