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This week, I'm running away from Edinburgh -- to Berlin.

Edinburgh (where I live) is a very odd city. Like Rome, it's built on seven hills; the basalt remains of an extinct volcano, and one that was scoured by an ice sheet just 12,000 years ago, so that the city is dominated by a collection of crags and cliffs. It's been inhabited since the early iron age, but the modern city dates to the middle ages, and has been shaped by war and geography. You can find the first ten and twelve story high apartment blocks in the world here, built in the middle ages to cram bodies inside the city walls. (Imagine living in a tenth story apartment with no elevators and no plumbing or water supplies!) There are roads that pass over and under each other, streets on bridges with buildings to either side, streets in tunnels, secret histories and royal societies. There's nothing quite like Edinburgh, and it's a wonderful place to live and write ... until the summer, when the Mimes arrive.

The Mimes -- in white-face, pretending to be statues, or delivering very dodgy weather forecasts via sign language -- are one of the first harbingers of the Festival. During the Edinburgh International Festival (one of the largest performing arts binges in the world) the entire city goes a little bit mad. Everywhere stays open a couple of hours longer, and the pubs and clubs (which normally open until after midnight) frequently fail to eject their clientelle until dawn. There's a performance in every basement, stand up comedy on every street corner, the population triples, and you can't go out of your front door to buy a newspaper without tripping over a street theatre troupe from Prague or a gaggle of lost tourists from New York.

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Enter for a chance to win a poster of Charles Stross' Saturn's Children!

This week we welcome Charles Stross, a brilliant new voice in speculative fiction, as our special guest blogger. To get you revved up for his visit, we're giving away fifteen posters of his latest book, Saturn's Children. This amusing and thought-provoking tale is set in a future where humans have become extinct and only our androids remain-though as the femmebot Freya discovers, even without humans the universe is far from being a quiet place.

The first fifteen readers to email us at penguin.blog@us.penguingroup.com with their full name and mailing address will each receive a poster (Approximate Retail Value ("ARV"): $0.00). Offer ends July 14, 2008, 11:59 PM Eastern Time.

For details and Official Rules click here. Get ready for Charles Stross, here and present this week!

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Janice Taylor, author of All Is Forgiven, Move On: Our Lady of Weight Loss's 101 Fat-Burning Steps on Your Journey to Sveltesville wants to know ...

What happens in your brain in response to a sidesplitting, tear inducing, stomach aching, diaphragm exercising laugh?

Laugh Yourself Skinny - Researchers at the University College London Institute of Neurology found that as study subjects mulled over, chewed on and digested verbal jokes, the areas in their brains that are connected to understanding and learning were set in motion.

These one-liners set off a chain of chemical reactions that instantly elevated participants' moods, reduced pain and stress, and boosted their immune systems. (Holy Guacamole!!) We are talkin' about dopamine, folks. Dopamine is released when we eat, have sex and laugh!

In addition, (wow folks, we hit the mother load here), laughter promotes good health by warding off anger and aggression (remember, there is a different between being assertive and aggressive). Laughter communicates good will.

Let's agree to make laughter a part of our reality. Let's individually and collectively find the funny side, the humorous side in as many things as we can!

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This week we round off a series of interviews with the DK staff, where we'll try to figure out the secret to their success by asking them about their favorite childhood books and what sort of trouble they've been up to lately. Next week we'll take a look at some of the great books DK has published, and what they have in store for us down the road.

Nancy Ellwood, Editor

Okay, quick: tell us about yourself, what your favorite book was as a child, and how you ended up as an editor at DK!

I have been a science nerd my whole life. I was always going to be a doctor, actually. Then I got to my senior year of college and thought "hmmm . . . not so much." So I put my degree in English to work and got a job in publishing. And except for almost two years at the Penguin Young Readers Group (hi Grosset & Dunlap and PSS!) I've been in nonfiction my entire career. I'm still a science nerd. Who can spell.

What does being an editor at an Imprint as eclectic as DK involve? Do you wear many hats at once, and if so, how do you keep everything separate in your mind?

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Janice Taylor is our guest blogger during the week of June 30th. If you have any questions for Janice Taylor, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some brief information about All Is Forgiven, Move On:

An inspiring new book from Janice Taylor- the ultimate weight loss cheerleader

In Our Lady of Weight Loss, Janice Taylor put a new, creative spin on weight loss, offering humor and art projects to make slimming down fun. Now, in All Is Forgiven, Move On, Taylor takes us on a journey to Sveltesville-the magical place where we can free ourselves from the food and weight madness for good.

As Taylor explains, to change our bodies we need to radically shift our attitude-get out of our ruts, forgive ourselves for past sins, and move on with a positive outlook. Here she offers 101 forgiving, fun, and fat-burning steps along the road to weight loss to help readers recharge and stay inspired when the journey gets rocky. Each step ends with a "new point of view"-a fresh perspective on weight loss-and includes advice and activities such as:

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Like most people, I discovered Meg Gardiner through Stephen King's laudatory essay in Entertainment Weekly wherein he expressed his shock over the fact that she wasn't yet a household name in the US. With complete conviction he stated that he was 'convinced (he) had found the next suspense superstar', and when Stephen King says that, the publishing world sits up and pays attention.

But long before I heard that Dutton was going to be publishing Meg's books here in the US, I decided to check out her blog and became hooked. Her voice was compelling, her anecdotes amusing, and her gathering of weird and wacky news stories from around the globe provided me with endless fodder for small talk at bars around New York: "Did you hear about the gnome that is terrorizing this small village in Argentina..?" became a common opening gambit of mine, as did "Are you aware of the prolific number of underwear bandits in the world?"

So when I heard that Meg was going to be signing books at Barnes & Noble, I grabbed my copy of The Dirty Secrets Club and headed over to meet the person behind the novels and endlessly entertaining blog.

And it was really fun. Meg Gardiner is vivacious, amusing, and very charming, and has clearly been enjoying her new found success while keeping her feet on the ground. She recounted her attempts to persuade neighbors in England that she was in fact a normal, pleasant person and not a ghoulish weirdo from the mythical land of California who spent her time putting imaginary people to death. She spoke about her incredible good fortune in being noticed by Stephen King, and then laughed over how his criteria for selecting her book had not been the scintillating language nor the gripping plot, but rather the large and easily read print.

My wife and I have periodic arguments about throwing books out. I love to throw books out. I treat that as a sign of my love of books and -- even more -- my love of readers.

But isn't it a horrible thing to throw out books? It just doesn't feel right. Shouldn't you donate the books somewhere? I think not, at least in many cases.

Here's the problem. If you donate the otherwise-thrashed book somewhere, someone might read it. OK, maybe that person will read one more book in life but more likely that book will substitute for that person reading some other book instead.

So you have to ask yourself -- this book -- is it better on average than what an attracted reader might otherwise spend time with? No I'm not encouraging "censorship" of any particular point of view, but even within any particular point of view most books simply aren't that good. These books are traps for the unwary. A lot of books don't make the cut of "above average to those readers they will attract" and of course since you've spent some time with the volume you ought to be in a position to know. (But note the calculation is tricky. Sometimes a very bad book can be useful because it might appeal to "bad" readers and lure them away from even worse books. Please make all the appropriate calculations here.)

The worst thing you can do is to give such a book to a friend or family member. You are tempting them, but with mediocrity.

So all you altruists out there, ready your trash can and exercise your elbow. See if you can toss a book into the bin with one fell swoop from across the room. The love of humanity demands it.

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Tyler Cowen, Discover Your Inner Economist, economics, practical, incentives, signals, markets, Penguin Books, books

» David Bajo reads an excerpt from The 351 Books of Irma Acuri.

» Listen to other Penguin Podcasts.

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This week we kick off a series of interviews with the DK staff, where we'll try to figure out the secret to their success by asking them about their favorite childhood books and what sort of trouble they've been up to lately. Read these interviews carefully--DK's secrets are contained within!

Katy Ball, Publicist

Okay, quick: tell us about yourself, what your favorite book was as a child, and how you ended up as the US Publicist for DK Eyewitness Travel and Rough Guides!

Though I did fall into publishing partially by happenstance, I have always been a voracious reader. Among my favorite early books was Go Dog, Go, which my parents read to me every night for a while. In it, a narrative-free string of scenes involving party-going dogs that drive cars up tree trunks and dogs that ski past each other in increasingly improbable hats parades by in milky blues and poppy reds. My perfectly common but most heartfelt love of entering new worlds-and the local public library's "Book It!" program that kept me rich in Pizza Hut and waterslide park coupons--kept me discovering new authors, which I continue to do, with the curious shadow of my past manias for Christopher Pike, then Tom Robbins, and more recently Lorrie Moore hanging over me. After growing up in San Jose, CA and moving to the East Coast to explore the nooks and crannies of New York while double-majoring in Language and Mind-a poorly orchestrated but very interesting hodge-podge of linguistics, psychology, and philosophy courses-and Spanish, I was offered a job as a Marketing Assistant by Continuum Books.

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Penguin Australia was named Publisher of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards and Penguin Canada was named Publisher of the Year by the Canadian Booksellers Association. Both honors were presented at publishing industry awards ceremonies held this past weekend.

Penguin Group Chairman John Makinson commented, "To win the Publisher of the Year award in two such important markets on different sides of the world on the same day is probably a unique achievement. But each award is richly deserved in its own right. Gabrielle Coyne in Melbourne and David Davidar in Toronto have shaped publishing companies that stand comparison with any in the world. All of us at Penguin are enormously proud of what they and their colleagues have achieved, and delighted that those achievements have been recognized."

Penguin Australia's achievement was reflected across the Australian Book Industry Awards book award categories, with Penguin authors and illustrators taking home awards in four of the seven categories for books. Maggie Beer accepted the prize for Illustrated Book of the Year Award for Maggie's Harvest; Kaz Cooke won General Non-Fiction Book of the Year for Girl Stuff. The Peasant Prince written by Li Cunxin, illustrated by Anne Spudvilas and based on Li's bestselling Mao's Last Dancer (published by Berkley in the US) won the Book of the Year for Younger Children; and Monica McInerney won the General Fiction Book of the Year for Those Faraday Girls. In addition, Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book, published by Harper Collins in Australia but Viking in the US, won Book of the Year. This is the first time in nine years, and third time overall, that Penguin Group Australia had been awarded this major accolade.