This Week’s Writing Links: 2013 ‘Best of’ List Edition

Nelson MandelaIt’s that time of year again when “Best of” lists litter the internet and fill our Amazon carts with prospective purchases that will probably never leave the save for later section (I think my actually order to place in cart rate is like 14% retention, which has to be pretty good all things considered).

Amongst the early best of lists reporting in, we have Storyville’s Top Ten Best Short Stories of All Time, Goodreads Best of Fiction Awards, the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2013 and Film.com’s video countdown of the 25 Best Movies of 2013.

In other news, I hope NaNoWriMo went well for everyone that participated. Even if you didn’t finish an entire novel, I’m sure there is half a book, a chapter, a paragraph, even a single sentence that you wrote that made it worth it. Good job, NaNoWriMoers. And of course, it was very sad to hear about Nelson Mandela’s passing. At the age of ninety five it is hard to argue that he lived anything other than a full life, even if a good portion of it was robbed from him. RIP, Mr. Mandela.

Links:

– Nelson Mandela on The Nature of Hatred (gnosticwarrior)

– Goodreads Best Books of 2013 (goodreads)

– The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Video Diary (ign)

– Patrick Rothfuss Reviews Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Ocean At The End of the Lane’ (goodreads)

– 15 Powerful Insights From Slaughterhouse Five (inktank)

– Top Ten Best Short Stories Ever (litreactor)

– Today’s Quotable Quote From Raylan Givens (imgur)

– 13 Great Opening Lines From 1950s Novels (whizzpast)

– NPR’s Best Books of 2013 (npr)

– Film.com’s Video Countdown of The 25 Best Movies of 2013 (film)

– Guardian’s Best Books of The Year (guardian)

– NY Times 100 Notable Books of 2013 (nytimes)