New books blog alert: The Book Bench at the New Yorker.com is publishing. Above, a photo of the blog's namesake:

When an e-mail is sent out announcing the arrival of new stacks, it is not unlike a drop of blood entering shark-infested waters. Newcomers to the magazine, shocked by the frenzy, are gently reassured by an editor: “But it’s for books.

The new Oprah's Book Club pick has not yet been revealed, but Publisher's Lunch informed us that the publisher is Vintage. Also, that James Wood's first New Yorker book review piece, "Desert Storm," is up and online. There's a new best-seller list (for trade paperback fiction) included in The New York Times Sunday Book Review

The New Yorker was destined to have a books podcast at some point. The Dating Game is the first edition, featuring a discussion between Edwidge Danticat and fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. They chat about Junot Díaz’s 1995 short story “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)" from his collection Drown

I'm number one!

Philip Roth wins his 3rd PEN/FAULKNER award for Everyman. Finalists included Edward P. Jones (All Aunt Hagar's Children), Amy Hempel (The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel), Deborah Eisenberg (Twilight of the Superheroes), and Charles D'Ambrosio (The Dead Fish Museum).

In Him Her Him Again the End of Him, former Saturday Night Live writer and current New Yorker humor scribe PATRICIA MARX offers up a close study on how far a girl will go to get over her hideously self-indulgent college boyfriend. Marx’s unnamed enraptured narrator falls in love with Eugene, a fellow Cambridge University student who has a wandering eye and an ego big enough to fill a singles cruise ship.

SHE'S ELECTRIC: Calvin and Alice

We were caught staring, weepy-eyed, at the above photo of CALVIN TRILLIN and his wife, Alice, in which they look like the happiest, you-wish-you-had-their-relationship couple we’ve seen since the glory days of Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson. But really, we couldn’t help ourselves.