In this amazing short by UK filmmaker Tom Jenkins, a lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View. This is stunning.

Watch:

Yeah, that one. There was one more left in the series. And it was, we humbly think, the best of the bunch, so we aptly saved it for last: book blogger extraordinaire Maud Newton summarizes the classic novel Crime and Punishment in 60 seconds.

Because we thought the challenge wasn’t hard enough, we asked filmmaker Adam to summarize the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in one minute.

A 1-minute silent explanation of Inception using only the OS X Finder. Via Kottke.

The latest in our “classic novels in 60 seconds” series. Enjoy!

In the video below, a writer discusses a subtle technique to help tighten a scene in his work in progress.

Maybe it’s just me, but there seemed to be quite a few literary videos cropping up over the weekend. From hitchhiking Kafka cockroaches to songs about children’s literacy to an astute response to the ongoing debate over publishing’s future, I thought these videos might serve as a nice introduction to the week. Read more »