Book Marks: A Little Overpraised, Struggling Over Mein Kampf, Etc.

I read this with incredulity. An exhibit featuring food in a bookfest? The Frankfurt Book Festival, no less. You need a subscription to read the English version (boo).

I feel for "Lucius Maximus". The guy who chronicled the decades-long slide of Malaysian football might now have another depressing subject to write.

Also:

• Is A Little Life 2015's "most infuriating, overpraised" novel? Someone at Salon seems to think so.
• A gay-romance novelist is accused of plagiarising straight plots. A good time to save this helpful infographic over the types and severity of plagiarism violations.
• More agony over Mein Kampf; one critic's arguments smell like her surname. Now I'm even more determined to pickup a copy (yes, we sell it here).
• Extremely loud and incredibly gross? Jonathan Safran Foer's novel reportedly pulled from a school over "vulgar" passages. Several free speech groups in the US are up in arms over the decision.
• A bunch of business-minded Cambodian kids published a primer on key business sectors in their country.
• Denied a visa for the Kumaon literary festival in Uttarakhand in northern India, Pakistani author Kanza Javed released her book, Ashes, Wine and Dust, over Skype. No reason was cited over the denial.
• Junot Díaz's support for the rights on undocumented migrants was called "unpatriotic" by the Dominican Republic, who then stripped him of an order of merit award. Not to worry, he still has his Pulitzer for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
• The worst ways to begin your novel, with advice from literary agents.
• This "untold history of African American cookbooks" is brief and has a lot of URLs, but one has to start somewhere.