Wednesday Linkstorm

Happy New Year everyone. J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday is tomorrow. People freak for that hobbit stuff, but I always thought it needed more girls and better outfits. There's such a thing as too many brown cloaks, you know.From Jacket Copy, 15 Literary Resolutions for 2013. I already told you mine: read Ulysses.**still a lieThe Millions reviews Escape Velocity, a new book about the excellent Charles Portis.A guy read 366 books in 2012. Nice work, guy! But it's not like you were crushing Pynchon or anything. Chronicles of Narnia don't impress me much.Speaking of Pynchon, P.T. Anderson is working on the film adaptation of Inherent Vice. Hope it's more Boogie Nights than The Master.Have you checked out the winter issue of Tin House yet? Looks awesome. Dybek, Charles Baxter, Karen Russell, Benjamin Percy, other human writers.Charles Simic's Year in Fragments for NYRB. No commentary necessary.Bad news: Linkstorm's going back on hiatus for two more weeks so I can go do a Michel Houellebeqc type of thing in Thailand, cept with less sex tourism and more writing of my thesis. You: What are you reading on your twenty-two hour flight? Me: The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg (front page of this week's Book Review), Lit by Mary Carr, and Umbrella by Will Self, cause I wanted something light and fun for the beach (JOKE. It's a modernist novel set in an insane asylum in early 20th c. England). You: You're bringing TWO HARDBACK BOOKS to Southeast Asia!! Me: Mind your own business.