Wednesday Linkstorm

It's Joan Didion's birthday today. Happy birthday, you fierce old genius! Don't love those cancer books, but Goodbye to All That is top ten. (Art of Fiction interview here. Nonfiction Pizza Party Didion stuff here.)Times list of ten best books of the year. What's in your top ten? Mine is as follows:1.-9. All three Fifty Shades of Grey books in a three-way tie10. The Passage of Power by Robert CaroDid Brett Easton Ellis try to buy coke via Twitter? No, it doesn't really seem like he did. Sorry guys. Tenuously related: did you ever see this cover of Fantastic Man where BEE is drinking a Diet Coke? It's the best.They announced the winner of the 2012 Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The dubious honor went to Nancy Huston for Infrared, which "tells the story of a frustrating family holiday endured by Rena Greenblatt, a photographer who specialises in taking infrared snaps of her lovers during sex." People are out there writing novels about all kinds of surprising things.Zoe Heller delightfully eviscerates this old windbag's third person memoir in NYRB.J.K. Rowling's grown up novel Hogwarts: The College Years has been optioned to be made into a television series. Hurray for that book, which was by all accounts terrible! Grumbledore is dead, long live Grumbledore!The Millions is doing an excellent series called "A Year in Reading 2012." Here is Jeffrey Eugenide's post.Hey, if you're local (and for some reason blowing off the UNH MFA thesis readings) go see Justin Torres read from We the Animals at the The New Hampshire Writers' Project in Manchester on Thursday night. Don't blow off the thesis readings though. Support your friends.