Yeh, how did Russians get so good at chess?

HTML Giant: Mazel tov on turning one year old.

Lit.

• Jonathan Franzen is #1!!!  (The Millions)
  

• An interview with Haruki Murakami
  

• Boston Globe takes a look at “gangster chic“

• The Moby Dick emoticon.

• Stephanie Kuehnert, Author of Ballad of Suburbia, picks “Bastards of Young” as one of her songs on Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes.

• A.V. Club says “here are the rest of the books we think you should read for 2009”.  Lame.

Politics

• When you see the title “Craziest Town Hall Ever“, you look. (The Daily Beast)

Music

• Carrie Brownstein went to see Marianne Faithful, and wrote about it.

Misc.

• Is anybody else impressed there is a blog about monster cereal? (via Boing Boing)

• The most disgusting thing ever.  Maybe.