Devil's dictation

We think it's the underpants that did it. While other dictators have maintained, in death, their air of menace and evil, the carefully orchestrated shots of Saddam Hussein in his jockeys were as effective and emasculating as the US administration intended.

While we look at Mein Kampf or Mao's Red Book as vestiges of horror, Hussein's back catalogue appears only ridiculous. Last year we told you of his novel Get Out of Here, Curse You which was banned in Jordan where Hussein's daughter had smuggled the text. Now a Japanese publisher has agreed to be the first publisher in the world to issue the book under the more appropriate title Devil's Dance.

A speedy thief

Meanwhile, in an echo of Philip Roth's 160 page Everyman, the second major literary work of the summer arrives on your shelves this week. Carried on a wave of superlatives and glowing reviews is double Booker prize winner (for Oscar and Lucinda and Ned Kelly) Peter Carey's Theft: A Love Story. The 260 page book is a modern tale set in New South Wales, alternately narrated by two brothers, one an artist fresh out of jail, the other even less reputable with an irritating habit of random word capitalisation. Book Notes, after the excess of last year's authors like John Irving would like to commend this new trend for brevity in major fiction.

Coffee war gets volume

The book world got a shot of espresso in the arm this week as the current global fascination with crossing traditional product lines and brand synergies and all those dull marketing ideas take hold in publishing. Starbucks continue their bid to become the world's most hated brand by announcing a move into book sales. They have already made a bid for the music market by offering a series of exclusive cds at their tills from brand suitable artists like Alanis Morissette. Now they are hoping to offer equally appropriate books by year end. Book notes reckons many writers would place the brand on a credibility par with Exxon and McDonalds and this may be a more difficult sell than the coffee company imagines. The coffee chain which is slowly entering Ireland will also be soon offering music, DVDs and books for download by wireless connection in their stores. Not willing to be left behind, the UK coffee-shop chain Costa Coffee have announced that they will be taking over the Whitbread Book Awards in 2007 – without the Whitbread part of course. The 400 stores throughout the UK are already carrying advertising for January's Costa Book Awards, won twice in its past incarnation by both Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.

Catching up with old Book Notes

More polls – the kind of stuff that we, if not everyone else, just love. The New York Times ran a long and ponderous piece celebrating the best books of the last twenty five years while bemoaning the current state of fiction. Runner up was given to Don DeLillo's marvellous Underworld while the winner was adjudged to be Toni Morrison's Beloved. Anyone who saw the Oprah Winfrey starring adaptation of that book won't be surprised to find it absent from the Guardian's list of the Fifty Greatest Film Adaptations. Top of the pile was To Kill a Mockingbird adapted from Harper Lee's 60's classic, followed by Mario Puzo's The Godfather and Philip K Dick's Bladerunner. Most recent entrant, from 2005 was Brokeback Mountain at ten. The £30,000 prize for Orange's best book by a woman was won by Zadie Smith's On Beauty, her homage to Foster's Howard's End which seemed destined to emerge from the prize giving season unrewarded..