Merry Christmas from Japan’s favorite beatboxer! I DON’T NEED A REASON!

• Writing Wrongs: When Authors Attack!

• “That there is some algorithm which helps us determine who wrote what falls into the same kind of category of futility as those scientific studies that claim to have determined the formula for female beauty or what makes a really good sandwich.”

• The top ten covers of 2009, courtesy of the Book Design Review.

• Everyone loves A Christmas Carol. But did you know that the book (despite its immense popularity) only earned Charles Dickens scant financial rewards?

• Who killed John Keats?

• Armit Chaudhari talks about a bunch of stuff…

• “The many mysteries boil down to three. There is the kind that can be solved: who planted the bomb? Will the travellers reach their destination? What is Mother’s childhood secret? There is the supernatural: dark metaphysical forces, never to be fully exposed, yet hinting of themselves in a way that suggests the author could reveal more if he chose, and might do, in his next book. And there are the insoluble mysteries: what lies beyond life, what beauty is for, why the innocent suffer and the guilty prosper, what goes on in the heads of other people, why life keeps fucking us over just when we’re doing all right — these are the mysteries the books dealing with them can’t solve, and it is for this reason that the best of these books are the ones we keep rereading.” — James Meek

• “Imagine that you are the man with the world’s strongest thighs / It is Christmas and you have received an enormous pair of porcelain football boots”

• Which books do you regret reading?

• A fascinating glimpse at the man behind Tin Tin.

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

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