According to Paul Russell, "There were certainly moments when I paused and asked myself: Why am I doing this? Why am I essentially forging a dead man's memoirs? ... And every time I was ready to abandon the project, I remembered that Vladimir had done everything he could to erase Sergey's existence. I would think, Damn it, I'm going to give this silenced brother a voice."

"Vladimir" in the above quote is Vladimir Nabokov. "Sergey" is Nabokov's practically forgotten younger brother, who died in a German concentration camp near the close of World War II. And that forged memoir is The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov (Cleis Press), the latest novel from Paul Russell, native Memphian and for nearly 30 years a faculty member at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Barrett Hathcock grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and went to Rhodes College. After receiving his MFA at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, he moved to Birmingham and taught at Samford before returning to Memphis and to Rhodes to teach in the school's English Department. Today, he writes for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's charity arm, ALSAC. Outside of work, Hathcock and his wife and family enjoy living in Harbor Town, north of downtown Memphis. And does this read as a class note, the kind you see in college alumni magazines?

It does, and it's fitting: Hathcock once wrote profiles and class notes for the U of A-Birmingham alumni magazine, and his debut collection of linked short stories, The Portable Son (Aqueous Books), which was briefly covered in the Flyer a few weeks back, reads as a reaction to the class-note blueprint, with Hathcock's central character, Peter Traxler, doing the reacting to two central questions: What the hell happened? And what the hell am I doing?

The idea started in the U.K. last year. This year, it spreads to the U.S.A. On the night of April 23rd, volunteers agree to hand-deliver 20 free copies of a book from a list of 30 available titles that are specially produced for this event and not for resale. In Memphis, the Booksellers at Laurelwood has signed on as a distribution point; members of the store's staff have signed on to be among the hoped-for 50,000 U.S. volunteers distributing a hoped-for 1 million free paperbacks.

This is no fly-by-night operation. World Book Night U.S. is a nonprofit group supported by the American Booksellers Association, Barnes & Noble, the American Library Association, and the Association of American Publishers.

The organization's website is the place to go to learn all you need to know, to view the list of titles available, and to become a "giver." But you do need to act. That deadline to register as a volunteer is, again, February 1st. The number for the Booksellers at Laurelwood is 683-9801.

Now here, for your ease of browsing, are the books I read in 2011, listed in reverse order they were Tweeted, which is to say chronologically with the last first.

One notable difference between 2010 and 2011 was the number of books I finished. I read 72 in 2010, but only 34 last year. The primary cause was the first book I read when the calendar flipped, the behemoth Infinite Jest. I started it on January 1st and didn't finish until May 22nd. (More Jest stats are listed below, in the book's entry.) I was left with roughly six months and a week of the year, during which I read 33 more things. I'm not a math nerd (I'm a book nerd, clearly), but that seems to be roughly the same rate I read books in 2010. I also had a child in June 2011, so there's that.

Partaking of Infinite Jest made me want to read at least one gargantuan work a year, so I'm implementing that strategy again this year. The first book I'm chewing on is Stephen King's Under the Dome. It is within five pages the same length as Infinite Jest. But 1,000-plus pages in the hands of one writer isn't the same as 1,000-plus in another. King's book flies, and I'll be done with it by the end of the month, probably. Infinite Jest is a labor — exceedingly rewarding, but an effort all the same.

Also on my docket for 2012 are Taylor Branch's Martin Luther King trilogy, lots of crime fiction I'm sure, and maybe even I'll get around to start tackling Proust's Lost Time series. (Or maybe I'll hold that till 2013 or '14, it intimidates me so.)

My favorite book of the year was #16 listed below, with wit, warmth, and humanity that has stayed with me for months. It's kind of like if Lord of the Rings was crossed with Peanuts. I read it in a massive tome that can be found at Randolph Public Library in Memphis. Highly recommended. (What book is it? Read the list!)

A housekeeping note: I've aired out the entries a little since I'm not as limited in space on the blog as I was on Twitter.

34. SPACEMAN by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso. The great team behind the series 100 BULLETS is back. Rejoice. I would read Azzarello and Risso if they wrote and illustrated the phone book. It would be dark as hell and illuminate the shadows in man's soul.

A topic on the website of the Los Angeles Review of Books this past November was literary friendships of the "transactional" variety. As in: one author asking another author for a book blurb, with something promised in return. The lesson, according to Glen David Gold in a piece titled "On Not Rolling the Log (Transactions along the Mississippi Delta)": be careful what you ask for. You might indeed get that blurb for the jacket of your book. But it could come in the form of what William Faulkner wrote for Memphis-born novelist and short-story writer Joan Williams.

The anthology Art from Art: A Collection of Stories Inspired by Art (Modernist Press), published this past summer, features McGowan's story "An Ephemeral Exertion."

McGowan's nonfiction pieces "Beetle" and "Owl" were up for Pushcart Prizes last December (with nominations made by the journal River Teeth and Thumbnail Magazine, where McGowan is a consulting editor).

And dotdotdash, the Australian literary and art journal, has published several examples of McGowan's artwork, including his 1986 photographs of pre-revitalization South Main Street in Memphis, in addition to images drawn from his series "Under Overpasses," "Spills," and "Crushed Plastic Cups."

The Flyer also didn't include, because there wasn't room, further information on McGowan, who supplied answers to questions put to him about his entry into what he calls Lit World. In what follows, I make room:

The Read in Peace book club, which meets in Memphis' Historic Elmwood Cemetery, is hosting Dickerson on Saturday, December 3rd, at noon inside the cemetery's chapel (824 S. Dudley).

Dickerson will be on hand to discuss not only her book but the preservationist cause behind it: rescuing what remains architecturally of the antebellum South. It was a cause that Dickerson shared with her relative through marriage, novelist and Civil War historian Shelby Foote.

Gone, which will be available for purchase at Elmwood and for Dickerson to sign, reprints a chapter from Foote's novel Jordan County, and it features Dickerson's own sensitive photography, which pictures mansions and humble homesteads, civic buildings and the land itself. It's beautifully done.

Cost to attend the event is $12 person, which includes lunch. Register at elmwoodcemetery.org/events or call 901-774-3212.

A traveling exhibit called "Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible," with facsimile images based on holdings from the Bodleian Library at Oxford University and from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. (in addition to early English Bibles from Rhodes' Special Collections). The exhibit runs at Rhodes' Barret Library from November 9th to December 21st.

White, who is also the book's creative director, is referring to his coffee-table-sized book of prominent (and some not so prominent but certainly memorable) Memphians who've made their mark in the city and across the country and the globe.

"We are strictly people," White says about the idea behind Memphians, which is first and foremost a picture book with accompanying text from a team of contributing writers. "Other coffee-table books have focused on the corporations, the architecture, the scenery of a region.

"We've tried to find people who have done something no one else in the world has done. Memphis may not have the beauty of Lake Tahoe or the economy of Atlanta, but in spite of that — or maybe because of it — Memphians are amazing."

He'll be the closing writer in this fall's River City Writers Series at the University of Memphis on Monday, November 7th, and Tuesday, November 8th. Kenan's reading and booksigning on Monday is inside the University Center Theater (Room 145) at 8 p.m. On Tuesday, an interview with the school's MFA students is in Patterson Hall (Room 456) at 10:30 a.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

Questions? Email creativewriting@memphis.edu or holladay@memphis.edu. Or call 678-4692.

On Friday the 28th, Lauterbach will head a panel discussion (featuring blues artist Bobby Rush, music educator Emerson Able, and music promoter Julius Lewis) inside the McCallum Ballroom of the Bryan Campus Life Center at Rhodes College. The discussion begins at 3 p.m., and it's followed that evening by a concert by Rush (along with the Bo-Keys) at 8 p.m. at the Warehouse (36 East G.E. Patterson).

And on Wednesday, November 2nd, at noon, the Dixon Gallery and Gardens (4339 Park) will host Lauterbach as part of the gallery's "Munch and Learn" lecture series.

Where does all this activity leave Lauterbach, who's already at work on a followup to The Chitlin' Circuit: a history of Memphis' Beale Street?

He'll be on hand to introduce his latest thriller, Ballistic (Berkley Books; publication date October 4th). He'll be interviewed on the library's syndicated Book Talk program. And this week, it's public knowledge:

Greaney has co-authored a thriller with a certain very well-known writer. The name of that writer has been officially announced. So too the title of the book. It's called Locked On (Putnam), due in December. Greaney's very well-known co-author: Tom Clancy.

Not bad for a local writer whose debut title from 2009, The Gray Man, is set to start filming next year. Word from Variety in August was that Brad Pitt's expressed interest in starring. See the profile of Mark Greaney in the October issue of Memphis magazine for more. But for now:

"I've been reading Tom Clancy's novels since the mid-'80s," Greaney said this week. "I'm honored to be given the opportunity to collaborate with him."

Mark Greaney will be reading from and signing Ballistic at Cover to Cover Cafe & Books (867-4028) in Arlington on Tuesday, October 4th, at 7 p.m. He'll be at the Booksellers at Laurelwood (683-9801) on Thursday, October 6th, at 6 p.m.

"As a member of the Rhodes College community, I pledge my full and steadfast support to the Honor System and agree neither to lie, cheat, nor steal, and to report any such violation that I may witness."

For an excellent introduction to Appiah's thoughts on what he calls the "honor world," listen to University of Memphis cultural historian Jonathan Judaken, who interviewed Appiah for NPR's WKNO affiliate. For questions on Appiah's lecture, write to Rhodes professor Scott Newstok at newstoks.edu.

(Corrections: Jonathan Judaken has moved from the University of Memphis to Rhodes, where he's been appointed the first Spence L. Wilson Chair of Humanities. And to reach Scott Newstok "@rhodes": That's, of course, newstoks@rhodes.edu.)

"This was the book that the literary world had been waiting for. It was an answer to questions we didn't even dare ask, questions we didn't know needed asking." — from "Publisher," a short story inside Memphian Corey Mesler's new collection of short stories, Notes Toward the Story & Other Stories (Aqueous Books).

He's been recently interviewed here, here, and here. What hasn't Corey Mesler been asked in an interview — ever? The author answered: