10 ways to celebrate banned books week.

A literary map of Manhattan, where “imaginary New Yorkers lived, worked, played, drank, walked and looked at ducks.”

And here’s another literary map (see above), this one a little simpler but no less pretty.

The Chronicle Review thoughtfully answers the question: what are books good for?

Have writers always gone to college?

Think your day job is awful? Try these:

“I worked the night shift for a dating/matchmaking service before it was done by computers. Had to go to the homes and apartments of depressed and lonely people who called at 2 in the morning and wanted to find out how to meet a mate. Had to keep calling in to the main office so they knew I hadn’t been ravaged. Never would tell me if they actually had matches for the women. I didn’t interview any men that would have been dateworthy. Quit as soon as I sold a short story.”

“Singing birthday/anniversary/congratulation tunes to total strangers in a gorilla suit. (The only way it could have been worse was if they’d made me wear the Tarzan loincloth, but I didn’t have the abs for it.)”

More bad day job for writer stories here.

Accurate science fiction.

This is like Google Lit Trips but way prettier–Lapham’s Quarterly maps out the journeys of Pygmalion, Oedipus, Faust, and the Leviathan across classic and contemporary literature. I’ve never been very good at geography (I’m an American, you see), so visualizations like this are really helpful to me.

View the full image here.

Google Lit Trips, my new favorite timesink, maps out the plots and character travels from classic and popular books, like The Grapes of Wrath (above), The Odyssey, and The Kite Runner.

On the origin and evolution of comics.

McSweeney’s debuts an exciting EXCITING new technology to turn literature into 3D (if you’re confused, which I imagine you are, just click here).

Some good tips and resources for getting started in publishing.

This year’s literary buzzword: whales. Vol. 1 Brooklyn has proof.

Lapham’s Quarterly takes a look at the day jobs of some literary greats, including William Faulkner, TS Eliot, and Franz Kafka.

What literature can tell us about the tragedies in Haiti and Chile.

Aaaand to give you reason for solemn thought and introspection this Saint Patrick’s day, here’s a nifty graph you can use to determine if your life either a) sucks or b) blows: Read more »

Are computer-generated animations the actors of the future?

Despairing video game poetry.

How much cash is a short story worth?

The sexiest poem of 2009.

Will films like Avatar usher in an actorless era?

Speaking of, Boing Boing proposes some storytelling risks that Avatar could have taken.

The New York Times offers some tips on cleaning out your library.

Where does your favorite author place on this tourist map of literature?

And because it’s the holidays and I’m feeling oddly sentimental, here are 156 countries singing The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” Read more »