The scientific description of Omura’s whale wasn’t made until 2003, which is awesome. A very rare and impressive whale.

• In what Laura Hazard Owen  described as a “train wreck of an investor’s call,” Barnes & Noble reversed course on pretty much every major decision it had made over the past several months. It’s still going to make tablets. The Nook and retail business aren’t going to be separated. Oh, Barnes & Noble, you beautiful hot mess of a bookstore. (Paid Content)
• The writer Will Self has told recounted in disbelief how, while on a walking holiday with his son, he was suspected of being a paedophile. “Can there be a more disturbing parable of the Britain we have become?”, he asked. (The Guardian)
• Monica Ali, bestselling author of Brick Lane, is starring in the new advertising campaign for Britain’s biggest retailer, Marks and Spencer. In the campaign, shot by Annie Leibovitz, and entitled ‘Britain’s Leading Ladies’, Ali joins a line-up of creative women including the artist Tracey Emin and actress Dame Helen Mirren. (Vogue)
• Idlewild Books, which specializes in travel and world literature, got a brand redesign this summer from a young designer named Andrew Colin Beck. (Fast Company Design)
• There’s a new Oprah-style monthly Book Club in town, and it’s going to “include both fiction and nonfiction, newly released titles and classics.” The first pick for Today‘s new book club is Bloomsbury‘s The Bone Season. (The New York Times)
• Moleskine has created postal notebooks that transform into an envelope so that you can write letters while you travel and pop them right in the mail. (GalleyCat)
• Greensboro, NC will get a new bookstore-cum-wine bar this winter. Brian Lampkin and Greg Grieve are opening Scuppernong Books, named for the scuppernong grape, North Carolina’s state fruit, whose origins go back to the lost colony on Roanoke Island. (Business Journal)

A song for Wednesday: “Slump” by Outkast