It has been a tough year, 2010.  It has been a year where we saw the economy continue to crumble, the environment destroyed by an oil spill, and Christine O’Donnell.  And after all of that, most of the country is paralyzed by an unexpected blizzard just as we try to ring in a new year.

There is a bright spot out there, and it’s taking the form of humor writing.  What better way to usher in 2011 than with books that can actually make us laugh?

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How F. Scott Fitzgerald’s signature changed during the first 21 years of his life, via.

Wuthering Heights gets the heavy metal treatment.

Making the case for slow reading, via.

My newest favorite online article McSweeney’s: “To the cult I inadvertantly started last night.”

Why the stories of Ray Bradbury have seeped into our culture.

The Fiction Circus on “genre pollution.”

Unwords is a dictionary dedicated to made-up words, via.

Aaaand to get you through the rest of the week: Brontë Sisters! Activate! Read more »

Yum.

I would totally read a novel based on Craigslist Missed Connections.

I would also totally enjoy book reports made out of cake. (See left.)

Teenagers on Salinger.

Interlinked short stories via geocaches.

For you book design lovers: 45 beautifully designed book covers and classic titles turned into cigarette packs.

Finnegan’s Wank.

McSweeney’s reimagines The Baby-sitter’s Club for the new decade.

How to be a literary manboy of New York City.

Aaand to get you through the rest of your week: the ultimate graphic novel, in six panels: Read more »

Pride and Prejudice: the emoticon adaptation

On David Foster Wallace’s “scare quotes,” and the joys of editing him.

An essay on the quiet art of cartooning, which sounds quite a lot like the quiet art of writing fiction. Which I guess, technically, is the same thing. Via The Rumpus.

What contemporary literature will people still be reading a century from now?

Pride and Prejudice, as written in emoticons, via Booksquare.

Books are America’s fourth form of entertainment, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Even better news: there were more than four items on that list.

Why the novel will never die.

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Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, and other famous writers narrate the funny pages.

Some NaNoWriMo tips from Mark Sample: Use foreshadowing to hint what’s to come. E.g., have the vampire say “I want to suck your blood” before he sucks blood. And: Add tension by making the gender of your narrator indeterminate. This works for race too. And age. And number of nipples.

Another (more serious) NaNo tip: write slowly.

The Millions thinks the recent film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are made a better trailer than it did a feature film.

Is Stephen King the most underrated novelist of our time?

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I have a special fondness in my heart for bad poetry. Partly because I’m a terrible poet myself so I can’t help but identify with fellow terrible poets. And also partly because, as I’ve discussed before, I think there’s a lot to be gained by disregarding the rules of “good” writing–how else are you supposed to further your craft if you’re not willing to take risks?

So in the spirit of taking risks, and of totally missing the mark, there’s Very Bad Poetry, an online journal featuring such gems as these: Read more »

This week: the Dan Brown clusterfuck, Amish smut, and some fantastic author lists from HTMLGIANT, along with your pick-me-up, after the jump.

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I was going to post this in our Lit Drift Twitter account, but it’s just too good not to share on the main site. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, arguably the Internet’s most whimsical quarterly journal, has a syllabus up for a fake new course for Internet-Age Writing, called ENG371WR: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era. Planned lectures include such topics as “Reading is stoopid,” “The Kindle Question,” “140 Characters or Less,” and “I Can Haz Writin Skillz?” Also note that attendance is “unnecessary, but students should be signed onto IM and/or have their phones turned on.” Delicious.

Coincidentally enough, I was recently messing around in my Scrivener, experimenting with structure and new styles of writing, and found myself trying to write a scene purely in text/IM speak. Uh, it shouldn’t come off as a surprise that it really sucked. Won’t be trying that again…until, of course, some more accomplished writer does it and somehow makes it work, in which case nose will be back to (digital) grindstone.

As an aside: I actually had to put this post title through an LOLspeak Translator because I just don’t know any better. Fail?

Read the syllabus in full here. [McSweeney's Internet Tendency via Bookninja]