“Best novel” awards are not often thrown into metaphorical convergence with mixed martial arts. However, as the founders of the Tournament of Books point out, “Everyone knows that, behind the scenes, the National Book Award is both arbitrary and brutal, sort of like Keeping Up With the Kardashians meets Ultimate Fighting. The Tournament of Books is every bit as arbitrary, but we have simply lifted the curtain so the reader can actually see the caged octagon in which the books meet, barefoot and snarling.” In the spirit of March Madness, the 5th Annual ToB takes 16 of the year’s most lauded novels, seeds them and brackets them into head-to-head matchups to be judged by a literary peer. Round 1 of the contest has already seen Tom Piazza’s City of Refuge trump Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, Mark Sarvas’ Harry, Revised beat out Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 win handily against Fae Myenne Ng’s Steer Towards Rock. Later rounds will include the reentrance of “zombie” books, risen from the dead by popular vote to eat brains in the quest for first place and the accompanying prize of a live rooster.

Thousands scramble for free books after Amazon used book vender abandons warheouse. There’s really some beautiful photography here, in addition to the many readings one could make of the article.

Survey based on Catholic confessions found that the most common sin for women was pride (followed by envy and anger), while the most common sin for men was lust (followed by gluttony and sloth). The report was based on a study of confessions carried out by Fr Roberto Busa, a 95-year-old Jesuit scholar.

Is the fix for what ails the publishing industry a new model that “definitely guarantees” writers won’t get paid? Author and founder of the Concord Free Press Stona Fitch thinks so. Concord Free Press gave away all 1,500 copies of its first publication (Fitch’s Give and Take). In exchange, they requested that every reader make a donation to something important to them. What’s in it for writers? Nothing that they can put in the bank. But Fitch says that money isn’t everything. “I spent most of my 20s in a punk rock band, my 30s directing a non-profit farm that gives away produce to people in need. Concord Free Press is a logical next step, kind of… When you take the money out of any equation, things generally get a lot less fraught with worry, more open, and a lot more interesting.”

These artful pedestrian crosswalks are street art of a different stripe. Their most notable creator is Peter Gibson (aka Roadsworth), a street artist who got his start as a frustrated cyclist in Montreal. Having “found little encouragement in breathing car exhaust, having to share the road with eighteen wheelers and the prospect of receiving the dreaded ‘door prize’ (having a car door opened in your face)”, Gibson took up stencils and spray paint for a commentary on car culture (and a more prosaic “desire for more bike lanes”). Like Banksy, Britain’s premier graffiti artist (profiled here in Lauren Collins’ New Yorker piece), Gibson’s minor acts of subversion are motivated by a desire to jolt passerby out of their workaday attitudes for a moment of lucidity.