Masaharu Morimoto is our favorite (and always underrated - God those judges are fools) Iron Chef. He'll be making an appearance on Wednesday, Oct. 10 at the Boston University Barnes & Noble to promote his new cookbook, Morimoto: The New Art of Japanese Cooking. According to our press release, in addition to the booksigning, BU has asked Mirimoto to demonstrate his recipes for the Seminars in the Culinary Arts:

Jack Romanos, president of Simon and Schuster is retiring, and Carolyn Reidy is in. Looks like Romanos will have quite a bit of spare time on his hands. Might we suggest whiling away the hours with Literary Rejections On Display? We've been hooked for the last couple of weeks: reading about someone else's failures is about as comforting as a good cup of boiling tea in an overly air-conditioned office (the Phoenix HQ has been freezing us out all week).

"Tonight, Tonight..."

Or the previous night, as the story goes. Clement Clarke Moore’s “’TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS” was published in 1823, and it launched the modern Santa Claus myth. Before that, Santa was just St. Nicholas, patron saint of children, not a jolly fat dude with a penchant for monochromatic red outfits and worldwide sleigh travel and a ginormous sack of toys.

"YUM-O!!!"

THE HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST

Not everybody hearts AMY SEDARIS (particularly reviewers of her latest film, Strangers with Candy), but we’ve been glued to the trajectory of her career ever since reading about her bizarre lifestyle in brother David’s essays. Amy’s first solo book project, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, harks back to the days when a hostess’s duties were “charmingly old-fashioned, like courtship or back-alley abortions.