2. What you want is reliable quality. Like a Glock. The new Diagram is up. I enjoyed Scott McFarland’s “Teenagers with Glocks,” a take/homage on We Real Cool, a poem Gwendolyn Brooks grew to detest, to not want to read, to not want as her “one hit.” But come on, Gwen. Most poets have zero hits.

1. Rather than trimming their sails, a number of independent booksellers are taking a page from Amazon by producing titles themselves.

3. NANO fiction winter sale all that.

12. How to tie the 5 best fishing knots:

5. I see maybe (emphasize maybe) 2 films a year, as in going to actual movies. I saw Dragon Tattoo thingy. I did not leave depressed. Plot (and this is a plot heavy film) pretty much held together. Acting was passable by today’s standards (Rooney Mara very strong). Cinematography didn’t utilize the setting as it could/should have, but it wasn’t weak or distracting/jarring. So then I stumbled on Nordic Noir. Why would Nordic Noir be so literate/popular?  Because:

Norway remains, in most people’s consciousnesses, the most imposing of the Nordic countries, with the ancient legacy of the Vikings still casting a shadow over the country (and foreign perceptions of it).

Many of us do seem to be having an Ingmar Bergman moment right now. We love to slouch on our IKEA sofas watching the characters in “Mad Men” as they ruminate on the loneliness and impotence of their lives while staring silently off into darkened rooms filled with Danish modern furniture.

Three factors underpin the success of Nordic crime fiction: language, heroes and setting.

OK

6. The biggest obstacle to me publishing Wild Grass was finding the courage to self-publish. So many people told me it was a bad idea, but deep down I knew it was what I wanted to do.

7. Look, a Caitlin Horrocks story at the Paris Review. Read this. 

8. Need a resolution? I suggest never leave “the house without a gun, a knife and a flashlight” Indeed. Lives saved. Or you could just tip properly.

9. Oliver Stone (yes, him) talking about writing in a way maybe we haven’t seen so much? You should probably go ahead and watch this (and the first part). Audience questions, sometimes conflict, a nuanced and, well, interesting Q & A. Be sure to check out the SPAZ “little boy” at 5 minute mark. Wow.

10. How about Amelia Gray rocking the LA Times? She has a ‘face to watch.’ I agree since her face is highly watchable and her prose is highly readable. Gray is actually my current most-given-book-to-promising-students book I give. And it always works. She rocks them. She is the “gateway drug” to better reading, me thinks.