Bookish Tweets by Our Bookish Peeps

(Or: Bleary-eyed blogger lists lit links from The Inkwell's Twitter feed, tries to pass it off as Book News.)

@AbeBooks: Discover what book was in Tiger's car when he crashed http://ow.ly/Igqc


@LOGICOMIX: The results of Slate's "write like Sarah Palin" contest are in. http://bit.ly/5g6mJu


@BloomsburyPress: Whew. Plenty of women in NYTBR top 10 of 09 list. http://bit.ly/5WwsH6


@sarahw: CJ Box on the ten crime novelists who are the best tour guides for their respective cities http://is.gd/5a3vW


@VillageBksBham: Have a few $1,000 around the house that you'd like to spend on Cormac McCarthy's typewriter? http://bit.ly/7gItF4


@carleenbrice: Author Erica Kennedy on bitches, books, female ambition, Sasha Fierce, & what's wrong w/publishing. http://ow.ly/IguF


Note: All of the super cute, lit-themed, Twitter avatars used above (and many more!) are available free of charge on Adam 'The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats' Koford's Flickr page.

Gift Tips for the Bookish: The Pillow Light

This little gem's got it all. One side lights up like a miniature sun, the other side has all the comforts of Nerf. You can warm your hands while reading, then singe your sheets while sleeping. And look at that strange, four-boob design. Snuggling up with this modern marvel will take you back to that hot, drunken threesome you had in college. Mammaries! Memories! But don't just take my word for it. Here's the manufacturer's misspelled pitch: Reading in bed gets mor comfy now- Pillow Light prevents stiff necks and keeps your hands free to turn the pages. What "mor" do you need to hear?!

If you can figure out the Kidsmodern website, you can order The Pillow Light here.

Adaptation News (sorta like Book News, only we effed with the endings)

Filming of that gol durned Hobbit movie has been postponed again. This time, 'til summer of 2010.


I'm torn. While the three new clips from Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes look horrible, the film does star Robert Downey Jr. What to do, what to do...


Over at The Guardian UK, Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers describe the day they went to Maurice Sendak's house to ask him about filming Where the Wild Things Are.


Summit Films plans to milk its lone cash cow for as long as they can, splitting the fourth Twilight book, Breaking Dawn, up into two movies. Click here to read what that'll entail.


Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) and Spike Lee (Do The Right Thing) are teaming up to adapt the French comic book, Miss: Better Living Through Crime. The book is about two 1920s criminals, Nola and Slim, who become killers for hire.


The Wire's Idris Elba has joined the cast of Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Marvel Comics' Thor. Already on board are Ray Stevenson (Punisher: War Zone), Tadanobu Asano (Taste of Tea), and Natalie Portman (far too many of my waking sex dreams).

Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment Explained...Using Comics

Book News, In Brief

Author/trench coat model Neil Gaiman thinks that the 'death of audiobooks' is just a case of folks talking out their asses.


Kinda-sorta sister-lists to our own Listmania: Best of 2009s: Ozaku's and The Precious Curmudgeon's lists of Manga Gift Guide Lists.


Author/masturbation magician Grant Morrison has a feature length documentary about himself coming out in 2010. Wired has two clips from it here.


Wired again. This time they're skewering a modern-day literary classic with The Top 20 Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn From Twilight. Now with video!


"Borders has gone belly-up, Amazon thrives, and doom-mongers are proclaiming the death of literature on the high street. But this could be the opening of a fine new chapter…" Or so The Guardian UK claims.


Jonathan Littell has won the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction award for his 900-page novel, The Kindly Ones. The passage that cinched the win compared vaginas to various Greek mythological creatures including the snake-haired Gorgon and "a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks." Sexy!

Writers on Writing

"A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose."
Samuel McChord Crothers

Gift Tips for the Bookish:Toys Action Figures Collectible Figurines

December means holidays! Holidays mean gifts! Gifts mean otherwise avoidable stress-related illnesses, as good gift ideas inevitably dry up the closer you get to your pagan festival of choice. Ah, but fear not! Cuz from now until the end of the month, we'll be highlighting some prime prose-related presents for the bookish folks on your shopping list. As for the non-bookish folks...well, they get spam-laden e-cards.














Oscar Wilde action figure.
Available for $8.95 here.
Jane Austen action figure.
Available for $9.95 here.















Yotsuba&! pose-able figures.
Yotsuba is available for $16 here.
Cardbo/Danbo is available for considerably more here.

Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba's The Umbrella Academy.
Available for $33.99 here.


Editor's note: For the record, none of the sites linked to here -- or anywhere else on our site -- provide us with any sort of payment, credit, or compensation. When we post something like this, it's because we think this sh*t's cool. When we accompany these posts with purchasing links, we do so only so that similarly interested parties can easily obtain these products without spending hours on Google or (gasp!) resorting to Amazon. Trust me, when it comes time to whore myself out, it'll be on a street corner, and I'll be in drag.

Tuesday's Tips for Flailing Writers

The title says it best: Why Writing Rubbish is Productive



Fiction Notes details the two types of feedback, as well as the five reactions to it.


Writing blogs are currently obsessed with correct comma usage. Don't believe me? Click here, here, and here.


Fiction Matters has 3 Questions To Better Understand Your Novel (that will also help you write a better query letter).


Bad Language About Writing's Open with a Punch, Close with a Kick would be more effective if most writers weren't potbellied pacifists.


Nothing cripples creativity like self-doubt. A quick read through Quips & Tips' 4 Signs You Need to Reevaluate Your Writing or Publication Goals and you'll be positively paralyzed. Hello, handicapped parking!

The Minimalist Cover Art of Evan Gaffney

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding by Rebecca Mead
















Spent by Geoffrey Miller
Fangland by John Marks
















Twelve Fingers: Biography of an Anarchist by Jô Soares
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

Gaffney's minimalist approach is apparent on his website, too. It's just one page -- no pictures, no links.

Wendell's 30 Book Review:Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino

Calvino’s Italian Folktales is now my favorite folktale collection. It is a huge paperback with hundreds of stories in it, which average about two pages each. Calvino collected Italian folktales, sometimes building on previous folktale collectors’ work, and made slight changes - which he makes note of, unlike the Grimms - for continuity or even aesthetics. I would not have noticed the changes myself, as the tales still feel “authentic” to the spirit of the story, while having an elegant simplicity to the language, even in translation! The wonder I find in the stories shares space with a matter-of-fact attitude towards the roughness of life-giving it no more or less attention than it should have - as well as just the right amount of the bizarre to please my tastes. Thanks to these folktales, my imagination is sparked, and my interest in using the phrase “seek my fortune” in daily life is growing. Now to see whether this fortune includes a castle!

This will be Wendell 'Scutopus' Edwards' last book review, as he is heading off to NYC to find fame and fortune. Good luck, Wendell. You -- and your reviews -- will be missed.

Listmania: Best of 2009s

'Tis the last day of the next to the last month of the year. While this monumental day in your monthly calendar's countdown to extinction inevitably brings with it a sh*toad of personal, financial and familial regrets, it also ushers in a sh*tload of 'Best Of' book lists. For the sake of our sanity, let's focus on those.

NPR's Best Cookbooks of 2009

The L.A. Times' Favorite fiction of 2009

The NYTimes' 100 Notable Books of '09

ALA's 2009 Best Books for Young Adults

Entertainment Weekly's 10 Beautiful Books

Blackwell's 10 Favourite Books of the Decade

The NYTimes' Notable Crime Books of 2009

Booklist's Best Books for Young Adults: 2009

Lifehack's 10 Best Productivity Books of 2009

The National Book Awards' Best Books of 2009

NPR's Big and Beautiful: Best Gift Books of 2009

Examiner.com's 10 Best Book Club books of 2009

Drawn!'s Favourite Comics and Art Books of 2009

Publishers Weekly's 8 Different(!) Best of 2009 lists

The Globe & Mail's 11 Different(!!) Best of 2009 lists

The Millions' Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far)

The NYTimes' Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009

Politics & Prose's Favorite Graphic Literature of the Year

Small Business Trends' Best Small Business Books of 2009

The Christian Science Monitor's Best Books of 2009: Fiction

The Christchurch City Libraries Blog's Best and Worst of 2009

Human Events' Top 10 Best-Selling Conservative Books in 2009

Paul Gravett's Angoulême 2010: The Best French Comics Of 2009

The Washington Post's Best Fiction, Nonfiction, and Top 10 of 2009

The Comics Reporter's The Best Superhero Comics of the 00s, and his readers' picks