If you have up to three English words you’d like to have rendered in Sanskrit, Kiran Paranjape - an orthopedic surgeon in India - will do it for you for free, and very quickly. Go to his blog and scroll down a little until you see the form to email him for instructions.

He’ll also translate one to three words into other languages, including Bengali, Japanese, Chinese, and Hebrew.

You might not even need to submit, since he’s already translated thousands of words, phrases, and names, which he posts. “Love” and “peace” are pretty popular. And there’s “sister,” “know thyself,” “no regrets,” “forgiveness,” “strength,” “honor,” “thank you,” “Be the change,”  etc. People have paid a little more for longer phrases like “Live and let live,” “Faith justifies neither violence nor ignorance,” and “Enveloped in rich mysterious flesh.”

* Two new titles from Harvey Pekar due soon:

The Beats: A Graphic History

Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation

* Also arriving in the near future:

Best Erotic Comics 2009, edited by Greta Christina

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman

Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? by Alan Moore

Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder by Walt Kelly

* And who could resist Wilde About Holmes by Milo Yelesiyevich, based on the description?

Sherlock Holmes, in the absence of Dr. Watson presses Oscar Wilde into his service to help protect candidate Grover Cleveland from a sexual scandal in the 1884 U.S. presidential election, but everything goes wrong.

The Oxford Book of Death, edited by D. J. Enright (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Amazon | excerpt

From the publisher:

The inescapable reality of death has given rise to much of literature’s most profound and moving work. D.J. Enright’s wonderfully eclectic selection presents the words of poet and novelist, scientist and philosopher, mystic and sceptic. And alongside these “professional” writers, he allows the voices of ordinary people to be heard; for this is a subject on which there are no real experts and wisdom lies in many unexpected places.

Also: The Oxford Book of Dreams:

In this rich anthology, Stephen Brook has collected hundreds of dreams recorded by authors, poets, psychologists, and everyday dreamers since pre-Christian days. Ranging from Artemidorus’s crude, 2nd-century analysis to Freud and Jung’s dream psychology, and including works by Coleridge, Yeats, Tolstoy, D.H. Lawrence, Joseph Heller, and many other authors, The Oxford Book of Dreams offers an intriguing and varied sampling of humanity’s collective unconscious. It explores the inexhaustible fascination of dreams and their power as a great source of literary inspiration.

“Missed Connections” personal ads were around before Craigslist made them so popular, but they go back even further than you might think. From the General Advertiser of London, March 30, 1748:

Whereas, on Saturday last, a lady, genteely dressed, was seen to lead a string of beautiful stone horses through Edmonton, Tottenham, and Newington - this is to acquaint her, that if she is disengaged and inclinable to marry, a gentleman who was on that occasion is desirous of making honorable proposals to her; in which state if he be not so happy as to please, he will readily purchase the whole string for her satisfaction.

Reprinted in Lapham’s Quarterly, winter 2009 (the “Eros” issue).

Wired’s Nate Ralph got to play an early build of Dante’s Inferno, an Electronic Arts video game that’s at least a year away from release.

EA’s take still features Dante as the protagonist, but the poet-philosopher is now a hulking veteran of the Crusades. He returns home from war to find Beatrice, the subject of his love and admiration, murdered. When her soul is “kidnapped” by Lucifer himself, Dante dives down to the very depths of hell, armed with Death’s scythe, to win her back.

Hell, as described in The Divine Comedy, is a nasty place. The development team at EA, fresh off their last game, Dead Space, is hard at work re-creating the nine circles in all their glory. The backgrounds are teeming with life (of sorts). Countless souls spew from demonic fountains, or shuffle about through Limbo, waiting to be judged.

Much of the concept art and monster designs are the work of Wayne Barlowe, who is credited with working on the Hellboy and Harry Potter movies. An unannounced Academy Award–winning writer will assist in penning the game’s script, and many of the lines and characters — including cameo appearances by Pontius Pilate and Pope Celestine V — will be lifted directly from The Divine Comedy.