Gyllenhaal is up for the part of Denise Lambert, the talented bisexual young chef and family mediator. Gerwig would play Julia Vrais, middle child and Chip’s married girlfriend and Ifans would play Julia’s Lithuanian husband, Gitnas, in a cameo. Bruce Norris, playwright (Clybourne Park) and theatre actor is in talks to play Banker and amateur photographer, Gary Lambert.

The show, which will be written by Franzen, has already cast Diane Weist and Chris Cooper as Enid and Alfred Lambert. Ewan McGregor has also been casted to play the peter pan like Chip Lambert, the most outwardly screwed up member of the Lambert Family of St. Jude, Missouri.

It is rumored that the show will air in 2013 and will be produced by Scott Rudin (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.)

The pilot is about a Jewish family living in Washington, D.C. It has been described as“politically, religiously, culturally, intellectually, and sexually irreverent.”

Alan Alda is in talks to play Ben Stiller’s father, making the first time he’ll be on a series regular since M*A*S*H*.

The Millions has listed their most anticipated books of 2012 including works from John Irving, Jonathan Franzen, Lauren Groff, Toni Morrison and Nell Freudenberger.

The Atlantic also has a list of highly anticipated books of 2012.

According to an article on SheKnows, a library in Charlton, MA, sent a police officer to the home of a 5-year-old girl because of overdue books. It was found that Hailey Benoit’s books were a few months overdue and when approached by police, she asked if she was going to be arrested.

Charlton Library officials defended their position on their website with the following statement:

Library materials are purchased using taxpayer dollars. We feel as library staff that it is our duty to safeguard those tax dollars.

Do you think these library officials went to far? Should the age of the borrower been considered before police action was taken?

A copy of the world’s most expensive book, John James Audubon’s BIRDS OF AMERICA is set for auction later this month and is expected to sell for up to $10 million. This edition is only one of 120 and is expected to break auction records.

“Birds of America is most significant for its sheer beauty. It’s a masterpiece of illustration,” said Richard Davies of rare and used book specialist AbeBooks. “Aside from being famous in the rare book world, Birds of America has also immense historical and ornithological importance. Some of the birds John James Audubon painted are extinct and he also discovered new species.”

The book measures at over three feet height and runs to four volumes. Picking up a copy of the “book” is a two-person job, according to a book dealer.

What do you give a baby born with everything? If you’re Oprah Winfrey you give BOOKS! According to The Insider, Ms. O sent Jay-Z and Beyonce’s new baby girl, Blue Ivy, a trunk full of children’s books…now wouldn’t you love to know which books made Oprah’s list?

27-year-old novelist, Amanda Hocking, has become the darling of the self-publishing world when it was reported that she was making close to $10,000 a month on her self-published ebooks. Last fall Hocking sold her 1 millionth book for the Amazon Kindle, putting her in a class with only 11 other literary superstars including the likes of Nora Roberts, James Patterson and Steig Larsson. In a recent interview with NPR, Hocking discusses the dozens of novels she had written and the nearly 50 agent rejections she received before switching genres and writing (and self-publishing) paranormal romances. Last year she signed a multi-million dollar deal with St. Martin’s Press and her first book, Switched, is out now. Movie rights have already been snatched up and Hocking is on her way to literary stardom.

Bestselling author, legendary chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain will have his own imprint at Ecco, acquiring three to five titles a year. Daniel Halpern, Ecco’s president and publisher, noted that the paperback edition of Kitchen Confidential “was one of the first books we published at Ecco as an imprint of HarperCollins a decade ago. As an informal (over the table) advisor to me during this time, his intuition has been unerring–suggesting such authors as Ferran Adria and Fergus Henderson. Now he’s becoming one of us, sort of.”

Bourdain said he is looking forward to working with Halpern: “Like me, he’s passionate about words, about food, about the broad range of experiences out there–and I know from my own experience, that he’s crazy enough to take a chance on authors whom others have either overlooked or avoided.”

President Obama is on his nine day vacation on Martha’s Vineyard with his wife Michelle and their two daughters. Obama’s past reading selections have included Netherland by Joseph O’Neil and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. This time he brought almost all novels.

Winter’s Bone author Daniel Woodrell’s The Bayou Trilogy, is a trio of “Country Noir” novels. Rodin’s Debutante by Ward Just is a coming of age boarding school tale in postwar era Chicago, where Obama started his political career.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is about twin boys in Ethiopia raised by an Indian nun, one of whom turns out to be a doctor. To the End of the Land by David Grossman is a book about war in Israel and the relationship between a woman and her two sons, each fathered by different men.

President Obama does have a nonfiction book on his reading list: Pulitzer Prize Winner Isabel Wilkerson’s A Warmth of Other Suns, about the migration of black southerners to the North and Midwest. It looks like Obama has some good reading material for his days on Martha’s Vineyard.