Omni Daily News

Isn't the world ending in 2012?: On the day after an off-year election day, Marc Ambinder notes that the top three GOP frontrunners for 2012 all have books (and big book tours) on the way in the next six months: Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney.

Speaking for all PWBJHTPMMATOK?s: At the NYT, novelist/ironist Colson Whitehead celebrates the one-year anniversary of Obama's election (and the apparent end of all racism forever) by offering to be the first secretary of postracial affairs: "Some changes will be minor. In television, 'Diff’rent Strokes' and 'What’s Happening!!' will now be known as 'Different Strokes' and 'What Is Happening?'"

You think our Top 100 is long...: The longlist for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was announced yesterday. The award is notable both for offering the "world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English" (€100,000), and for having the longest longlist imaginable (156 titles, based on nominations from libraries worldwide). 2008 Booker winner The White Tiger received the most library nominations.

Trois livres puissantes: The big literary prize week in France continues, following the awarding of the Prix Goncourt to Marie NDiaye's Trois femmes puissantes, with the Prix Médicis prizes given to two North American writers: Haitian-Canadian Dany Laférriere for L'énigme du retour (available on Amazon.ca) and American Dave Eggers for the translation of What Is the What. (Interested Francophones can check out Amazon.fr's literary prizes page for more.)

Moving and shaking: The death at age 100 of anthropology and cultural theory titan Claude Lévi-Strauss (more on that later) sends his books Tristes Tropiques and The Savage Mind to the top of our Movers & Shakers list this morning.