It’s the end of the year, which means every media outlet and talkative friend has been regaling you with a fascinating list of their own personal favorite books of 2011. Now, we love lists as much as the next guy, but we also like to think a little bit about what these highly subjective choices might say about the listmaker. After all, you wouldn’t take reading advice from just anybody, now would you? Or even if you would, you should at least know what essential qualities their picks point to. Click through to read our (decidedly tongue-in-cheek) breakdown of what your favorite book of the year says about you, and in case you were wondering, our pick is on here too, and hey, we can cop to it. Read More »

Earlier this week, The New York Times published their annual list of 100 Notable Books, just in time for the holidays. While we can’t deny that every book on the list is a great pick, 100 is a pretty big number, so in case you don’t have the time or eye-strength to plow through their monster list, we’ve distilled it to the essentials, at least according to us. After all, while you probably don’t have 100 people on your holiday gift list, you probably do have 10, and you’ll find a little something for everybody here. Click through to see our favorites from their list, and let us know which of these you’re psyched to read — or which of the 100 you’d have chosen instead. Read More »

1. Old Ideas, the lovely Leonard Cohen’s first studio album in seven years, isn’t due out until January, but you can already stream one of the tracks called “Show Me The Place” here.

2. Julie Delpy has signed on to direct The Right Profile, a biopic about Clash frontman Joe Strummer that will focus on his later years, which were spent largely outside of the spotlight. [via CinemaBlend]

3. Stephen King, Haruki Murakami, James Frey, and Chris Adrian are among the authors on the shortlist for the 19th annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award, which is organized by the Literary Review. The lucky winner will be announced at a ceremony on December 6. [via Telegraph]

4. According to a new study in the UK, more successful male artists have more sexual partners than less successful artists. Oddly, the researchers’ findings did not hold true for female artists. [via Guardian]

5. While discussing last weekend’s pepper spray incident at UC Davis with Bill O’Reilly, Fox News host Megyn Kelly felt the need to point out that it is “a food product, essentially.” Meanwhile O’Reilly says, “I don’t think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police, particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus.” [via Gawker]

Bonus Buzz: Zoidberg Reimagined

Writers get a bad rap in the looks department: if you spend your time holed up and scribbling away, you must be a scrawny, pasty artist type, mustn’t you? Not so! There are a plethora of attractive and well-formed writers, both in history and today, that completely demolish such stereotypes, and whose likenesses we’ve collected here. Now don’t get us wrong — of course we believe that the stuff in their heads is much more important that the shape of their heads (or the shape of their bodies, for that matter) but that doesn’t mean we can’t applaud them for excelling in multiple areas. Plus, it’s well past time to make literature sexy again, and if writers can replace actors as pinups in our culture of ogling, we’ll be happy campers. We’ve tried to pick some contemporary authors as well as some more classic choices, and an equal number of men and women, just to be fair to everyone. Click through to see the authors we think have the best literary figures in history, and make sure to tell us your own picks in the comments.

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This week, we were surprised by the news that Emily Dickinson was a passionate baker, and it got us to thinking. Of course, some authors have exactly the hobbies you’d think they would — Hemingway was an avid hunter and fisherman, of course — but others are a bit more surprising. With so many cultural icons and celebrities, we tend to pigeonhole them like characters, fitting them into the roles they are most famous for instead of thinking of them as fully realized human beings — but famous authors have weird hobbies just like the rest of us, a few of which even make us think twice about that literary figure we thought we knew so well. Click through to see a few very surprising hobbies of famous authors, and let us know if you have the inside scoop on any more!

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Today at Flavorpill, we teared up a little over this story of an old married couple who died holding hands after spending 72 years together. We were shocked to discover that a Matthew Perry sitcom that’s more than 20 years old correctly predicted Qaddafi’s death in 2011. We wanted to eat this QReo – a scannable QR code made out of Oreo cookies. We found it hard to believe that Snoop Dogg turns 40 years old today. We loved listening to these kids back in the early ’80s explain what a computer was. We couldn’t decide whether or not we preferred this hilarious alternate ending to Back to the Future to the original. We were truly frightened to see what drinking, smoking, and eating too much will do to your face. We were thrilled to hear that the Wachowskis will be returning to their sci-fi roots with Jupiter Ascending — that is, after they wrap up work on Cloud Atlas. We enjoyed The Hairpin’s guide to eating your feelings. We listened to the legendary Chip Kidd describe how he came up with the cover design for Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. And finally, we took a trip down to New York City’s Lower East Side circa 1983, thanks to this trippy video by French filmmaker Marie Martine.

Halloween: It’s always more complicated than you want it to be. Even if you’ve got your plans set, it’s a struggle to find the perfect costume — without resorting to the same crappy, overpriced, pre-packaged getups everyone else will be wearing. Thankfully, just as we did last October, Flavorpill is helping you out with a series of easy DIY costume guides tackling various pop-culture realms. Don’t worry — there’s no sewing involved.

In our newest installment (we’ve already tackled music, art, and film!), channel your inner nerd with our selection of literary costumes. You may choose from some of the year’s most iconic author looks, a few our favorite literary characters new and old, or even learn how to turn yourself into one of the most talked-about books of the season. Trust us, you won’t even think about staying home to read on Halloween night with these costumes at your fingertips — but get ready to explain yourself to a lot of girls dressed like Snooki.

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As popular, contemporary authors go, few offer story lines as imaginative or images as vivid as Haruki Murakami’s. So it was exciting to learn, via Super Punch, that the LVMH-affiliated design site Nowness is running a competition for the best original art inspired by Murakami’s work in advance of the English-language publication of his newest novel, 1Q84. Now that the entries are in, readers have been invited to vote, and six winners will be crowned on October 25th. We’ve posted a selection of our favorite pieces — which range from photos to paintings to book-cover designs — after the jump.

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As we ease our way into the scariest month of the year, it’s time again for us to present our list of the most exciting books due to grace our shelves in the weeks to come. This month, take your pick from October’s virtual smorgasbord of books, and whether your pleasures lie in zombies, genetic anomalies, poetry, God, hell, love triangles or some combination of the above, you’ll find something to like here. Or maybe several somethings — after all, the weather’s getting chilly, and nothing compliments a cup of tea better than a great book. Click through to see our preview of the best bets for great reading this month, and let us know which books you can’t wait to read in the comments.

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If you are in any way witchy, or follow the equinoxes, then you will know that the 23rd marks the first official day of fall this year. We decided to jump the gun and present our fall books preview a day early, just because we can’t wait, and because we are in no way astrologically-inclined. The following pages feature seven works of fiction, one encyclopedia, one photo/interview book, a memoir, and (an invisible, but deeply felt) partridge in a pear tree. The best way to cope with the changing of the seasons is to confront them head on, you know, so put on a sweater, brew a hot beverage, and curl up with some of these books.

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