branta

Action: Hiding in the bathroom at a family party because there are no more words to explain why you’re still single or why you don’t have a proper job or why you’ve styled your hair in that funny way.
Do Read: If you like your family then read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre for something interesting to start a debate about; if you don’t like your family then read Maggots, Murder and Men by Dr Zakaria Erzinclioglu for tips on how to dispose of the bodies.

Canadians already read Margaret Atwood. Was there any person actually interested in Canada Reads who hadn’t read The Handmaid’s Tale? Ditto Life of Pi, ditto The Stone Angel, ditto A Fine Balance, ditto A Complicated Kindness. Again, I do not mean to disparage these novels; I unreservedly love Handmaid and Life of Pi, I dig Complicated, I’ve never even read Balance, and my views on Stone Angel are likely distorted by the overall unhappiness of my high school years and cannot be trusted.

Here are a trio of pieces for you to pass along at work today in order to seem quirky, cutting edge, thoughtful… or just like you spend too much time online. Wired’s rundown of The 10 Most Absurd Science Paper Titles… A new Edgar Allen Poe collection by Eric Mongeon… and Geist’s Artist and Writer Fund. Happy forwarding.

Here are a few links for a slow Friday at work: The New Yorker has a few fun flash puzzles of their covers to shuffle. The Poetry Ark is a multi-part contest that involves round by round voting with prizes and an anthology at the end. McSweeneys presents the 24th Existential Olympics, because life is… you know.

With Tim Burton’s surely zany and eye-popping Alice in Wonderland opening this weekend you may want to refresh your Lewis Carroll battery packs. One way to do so is subscribe to Daily Lit’s free installment service that sends you, via either e-mail or RSS feed, Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland so you can take a short reading break every day. Alice’s adventures come in 37 installments… check inside how to get started.

There must be at least a few etymologists out there in the crowd, right? Then this is the podcast for you. Charles Hodgson’s Podictionary posts a word-a-day inquiry into the strange beginnings of now-common words, often with an eye to their literary usages. He is also the author of Wine Words, a survey of the language of that grapey nectar. Today’s word is Bachelor, by the way. Check it out.

So it’s about 9pm, the last of the trick r treaters have vanished from your doorsteps… now it’s your time. Unless you have a schmancy ball to attend or wanted to get a head start cleaning the smashed gourds in your driveway, you likely should take a spin to the video store and nab a couple of nerve rattling bits of celluloid to do things up right. Here are Branta’s recommendations for ten classics as well as ten slightly more obscure alternates to put you off-kilter.

Considering Timber Timbre’s sound is often eerie and macabre, it would do nicely to play in the background while you’re handing out candy to bratty kids in Wal-Mart-bought Optimus Prime costumes. Fans can also listen to the album performed live in studio tomorrow at 11 a.m. pacific time on KCRW in Los Angeles.

AbeBooks users pick:

Bleak Books - the Top 10 Most Depressing Books

Earlier this year AbeBooks asked you to identify your most depressing reads and you came up with some desperately bleak books. There was nuclear fallout, the Holocaust, government oppression, poverty, mental illness and the savage nature of humanity itself, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.