The 2009 Oddest Book Title prize has drawn a record number of submissions, including the gem at left.

Fuck Yeah NYRB Classics!! Via The Millions.

American Psycho…the musical!

One poem, translated 31 ways. Via Silliman’s Blog.

What would your favorite TV characters read?

Choose your own literary elite nickname. Mine is ‘Helpless Drunken Cobra.’

Is Shoplifting from American Apparel the new Catcher in the Rye?

Our pals at Awkward Press (publishers of the very enjoyable Awkward One) are currently accepting submissions for their upcoming issue Awkward Two. Details here.

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Some lawyers have canceled a Harry Potter-themed dinner for children. Then, they kicked a puppy.

Tom Cruise has been revealed as the inspiration for Christian Bale’s performance in American Psycho. I feel vaguely unsurprised.

Walt Whitman in a Levi’s commercial. Wait, what?

A research associate at NYU has procured funding to rewrite Melville’s Moby Dick entirely in emoticons.

If you liked bad poetry, here are some awful opening sentences from a bad fiction writing contest. Also, if you’re interested in writing some bad fiction of your own, some tips include using as many adjectives as you can, describing every character in minute detail, taking no account of narrative pacing, and more.

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How do you turn a ten sentence book into a 94 minute movie?

So, at this point I’m sure that many of you have checked out Spike Jonzes’ Where The Wild Things Are. While this film has certainly polarized audiences, I hope that at least one thing we can all agree on is that adapting a ten-sentence book into a feature length film would be incredibly hard. And while I think that the team of David Eggers and Spike Jones ultimately did a good job in preserving the feel of the original Where the Wild Things Are, their movie got me thinking about the challenges implicit in turning unconventional books into successful films. Here are, in my mind, some successful adaptations of incredibly challenging source material:

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