manifesto: Charms

Recent web nuggets, literary and otherwise:

Those nauseating Anchor Family ads are now on YouTube. Thanks for telling us Spare Room. Part of NZ culture.
Dan Rhodes's top 10 short books - Was happy to see a list from my favourite writer appear on The Guardian. He is just so clever and appealing, check this out:
"The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich" - His name makes him sound like a range of cardigans, but Cornell Woolrich was in fact a writer of highly-wrought suspense fiction, this one being a fine example. In his 1948 book Rendezvous In Black, the main character is called Johnny Marr, and at one point he has a fight with a man called Morrissey. A must-read for Smiths fans."
Dan IS the man.
Works like a charm- Jonathan Franzen's is a squeaky chair, Jane Smiley's a hot bath, Douglas Coupland's chocolate chips ... writers reveal what gets their creative juices flowing.
Keats biopic should be Romantic, not romanticised - I'm worried that Jane Campion's Keats biopic will play up to the sickly stereotypes of the garret-dwelling poet.
Race to Size Zero - yup they all want to be pins.
Cole retains his British cool - had to search on Lloyd Cole after seeing him live at Al's Bar.
How to make a good comeback - Tim de Lisle
"The answer, my friend, isn't always blowing in the wind. Sometimes it's on another record. In 1984, the fey Glasgow-based indie guitar band Lloyd Cole and the Commotions released a song called Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken? Twenty-two years later, the fey Glasgow-based indie guitar band Camera Obscura have released a single called Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken. It hasn't made the charts, but it has been played 100,000 times on Camera Obscura's MySpace page. It's a suitable fate for Lloyd Cole, who couldn't write a song in his youth without mentioning one of his heroes ("read Norman Mailer/or get a new tailor"), and it's a fine song in its own right, with a chorus like an ice cream on a hot day."