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The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Amazon debuted a virtual currency called "Amazon Coins" on Monday. The coins can be used to buy apps in Amazon's Appstore and on Kindle Fire. A dollar will get you 100 of the new coins, though the Internet retailer will discount coins bought in bulk. Although you can't yet buy books with Amazon Coins, the move has raised eyebrows in the publishing industry. Amazon did not respond to an inquiry about the exchange rate between its coins and the currency of Chuck E. Cheese.

A lost journal written by poet W.H. Auden at the onset of World War II has been discovered. The notebook runs 96 pages and spans the period from August and November 1939 — around the time he wrote the poem "September 1, 1939." The Independent cites one journal passage that reads: "Paper reports German attack on Poland. Now I sit looking out over the river. Such a beautiful evening and in an hour, they say, England will be at war." The manuscript will be auctioned at Christie's in June.

Glen Ellyn School District 41, an Illinois school district, has banned the young adult novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower from its library and classrooms after parents complained about its discussions of sex and drug use. At least they can probably still read The Diary of Anne Frank.

For Out magazine, Bret Easton Ellis, the controversial author of American Psycho (who identifies as gay), denounces what he says is the stereotypical roles gay men play in the media: "The reign of The Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only about Tolerance and Our Own Prejudices and To Feel Good About Ourselves and to be a symbol instead of just being a gay dude, is – lamentably — still in media play."

Barbara Salinas-Norman, a Chicana author and activist, was found dead in her apartment in Santa Fe, N.M., earlier this month. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that police speculate the 70-year-old woman known as Bobbi had been dead for several months. Salinas-Norman had been a successful children's author and the founder of Piata Publications, but she later fell out of contact with friends and family, and her home was said to be in foreclosure.

Last year, almost the entire Michigan apple crop was lost due to 80 degree days in March and then some freezing April nights. This year, the apples are back, but everything always depends on the weather. The state was under a freeze warning Sunday night — a scary prospect if you're an apple grower and your trees have just come into bloom.

Tim Boles and his agribusiness colleague Case DeYoung were driving to work one morning in late April 2012 after a killing frost had hit the apple orchards in The Ridge, a region of ridges and rolling valleys in west-central of the state close to Lake Michigan. They stopped at a high point and knew things were bad when they saw the helicopters hovering, hoping to push down a warmer layer of air.

The Salt

Shriveled Mich. Apple Harvest Means Fewer Jobs, Tough Year Ahead

A bill making its way through the Louisiana Legislature would let Cajun citizens celebrate their ancestry by customizing their driver's license, adding the phrase "I'm a Cajun" below their photograph.

It would cost $5 to add the message; the money would go toward "scholarships distributed by the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana, a program promoting French language and culture in the state," reports NOLA.com.

The Senate has already approved the bill; it's headed to the House now, after the he House Committee on Transportation, Highways and Public Works unanimously supported the change Monday.

A similar bill in the House would create a license plate bearing the message "I'm Cajun .... and proud." It also includes an "I'm Creole" option.

Both measures are aimed at shoring up funding for CODOFIL, especially its "La Fondation Louisiane for the Escadrille Louisiane" scholarship program.

As the Houma Today website explains, "During last year's regular session, Gov. Bobby Jindal cut $100,000 from CODOFIL, saying in his official veto message that the program 'has been adequately funded.'"

In their current states, neither of the two bills seem to include requirements for proving ancestry or other connections to the culture being celebrated.

"There is a certain sense of uniqueness about Louisiana that people fall in love with," Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle tells NOLA.com. He added that the new ID would be "a way to identity and create a little bit of pride."

The possibility of Cajun IDs was welcome news to readers commenting on the NOLA story. One of them even inspired our headline for this post. Another simply wrote, "A little comic relief from yesterday's news. Gotta love it."

You might remember the story of the uproar earlier this year over a piece of art by the mysterious graffiti artist Banksy that disappeared from its home on a wall in north London and ended up on the auction block in Miami.

That auction was canceled, and residents of Haringey Borough, the area from which the mural disappeared, were jubilant, hoping that "Slave Labour," the Banksy mural, would be returned to its home. Unfortunately for them, that might not happen.

The stencil of a young boy sewing the Union Jack is the centerpiece of a June 2 exhibition in London, after which it will head to the U.S., where it is to be part of an "important private collection," according to the Sincura Group, which is organizing the exhibition and auction. In a statement, it adds: "The showing of this piece was the culmination of months of hard work and we simply wish to display it ... again [in] its home city before it disappears forever."

The statement notes that law enforcement authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have determined that the mural was removed legally.

It was initially reported that Sincura was auctioning the artwork, but the company noted that it was "making no financial gain from displaying this piece of art."

The Haringey Independent newspaper notes that the local council is working to get the artwork back.

In a statement, the head of the Trades Union Council for Haringey said:

"We appreciate that Sincura have made efforts to check that nothing illegal has taken place but it is a matter of business ethics. Banksy was certainly not asked before the work was removed let alone the people of Haringey in whose area he painted it. It should not be in private hands in the US, however it got there, but on display and not in Covent Garden but in Wood Green N22."