Sundry links from around the Web:

• National Book Critics Circle announces finalists. Franzen, Anne Carson make the cut
• Kate Pullinger’s The Mistress of Nothing reviewed in The New York Times. The verdict? Meh
• David Staines, who helped establish the Giller Prize and the Charles Taylor Prize for Non-fiction, named to the Order of Ontario
• British libraries announce “carnival of resistance” to oppose cuts
• Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen to adapt romantic novel by Saddam Hussein
• Introducing Steampunk Palin