Wednesday Linkstorm

We're two days out from the birthday of my very own hero, one Sam Clemens. Never has there been a better week to buy me this.It's year end list time, guys! Here's the Times list of notable books of the year. What's on your year end list of best things? This is mine: the movie Oslo, August 31, Canada by Richard Ford, and the time I got heckled on the street in Portsmouth, NH for wearing skinny jeans. Shouted from an SUV: "Your jeggings suck!" 2012, they're already calling it the year of pants-based insults.The Millions on Chris Ware's Building Stories. If you don't buy this book you hate art period.Ian McEwan's new novel reviewed by the Times. Looks good.Are you participating in the Twitter fiction contest? Tell a story in 141 characters. I've got one that's only 13: "This is dumb."Uh oh! Some jerks vandalized the Edgar Allen Poe house in Baltimore, including "defacing of its facade with graffiti, and the theft of the building's wooden front steps." Don't vandalize authors' historical homes, kids. Unless it's the Harriet Beecher Stowe house, in which case game on. That place sucks.Here's a thing from Page-Turner about classic novels with bad endings. Fair point about Huck Finn but let's lay off SC during his bday week, okay?