100 Best First Lines from Novels. A ton of great stuff here, including Thomas Pynchon at #3!

I love the idea. Famous writer gives short story messages in a bottle. The recipient has the option to bash the story out of there or leave it as it is.

Quoted: So this is cool: Michael Swanwick, who has published both a new novel (The Dragons of Babel) and a new collection of short stories (The Dog Said Bow-Wow) in the last four months, unwinds by writing short-shorts, sealing them in a bottle, then destroying every other copy or draft of the novel that exists on paper or hard drive. And then he gives it away—"usually to a charity auction or such, but sometimes to a friend," he explains. "The owner of the bottle, whoever he or she is, can either read the story or else possess the object—but cannot do both."

A detailed look at the creation of characters in various writing styles.

Quoted: From Jane Eyre to Jean Brodie, David Copperfield to David Brent, whether solidly realised or lightly sketched, fictional figures can be as vivid to us as real people. But just what, exactly, is a character, asks James Wood

The Bookgasm list of best and worst of the year in literature.

Quoted: In a world where the Goldman family is now making money (and taking writing credit for) O.J. Simpson's tasteless IF I DID IT book, and where the Kindle and the iPhone have made the media act like giddy schoolgirls, we at least have the solidity of BOOKGASM, presenting good (and bad) books for ...

The Library of America has just added critic Edmund Wilson to its collection. This lovely piece in the New York Times explores Wilson's unique brand of criticism and his deserved place in this canon.

Quoted: There has never been anyone like Edmund Wilson, with his range, style and modern outlook.

A collection of writers' rooms.

Scott Berkun, PM extraordinaire and now author, has written a great post on how to get started writing.

Quoted: Like many writers of my generation, I studied in the
school of liquor and lit. Previous generations of
American writers pointed the way. My literary heroes
when I was learning the craft in the 1960s were (or
had been) hard drinkers if not outright drunks:
O'Neill and Saroyan and Williams, Faulkner and
Steinbeck and Hemingway, Mailer and Baldwin and
Cheever, James Agee. The hard-drinking American writer
was a figure of mythic proportions, and by the time I
graduated from UCLA I was eager to join his ranks.