Friday Bookmarks

*Ford Madox Ford said that the best way to know if you'll like a book is to "open the book to page ninety-nine and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." A new site is putting his advice to the test - with a twist. Writers and aspiring authors upload page 99 of their own books, and readers let them know if they'd be interested in reading the rest, based on that page. I predict a lot of stabbiness coming out of this. 

*I once had a dream in which I was dating Anthony Bourdain, and he cooked me dinner for my birthday. It was a lovely dream, and I won't lie - I've got a tiny married-lady crush on the man. But I recently read that he's writing a "gourmet slaughterfest" graphic novel, which he describes as "about ultraviolent food nerds. ... sort of like Fistful of Dollars meets Eat Drink Man Woman." And while I would still let him cook me dinner, I don't think I'd let him pick the movie. 

*Struggling writers, prepare to choke on your lunch. Snooki just scored herself a book deal. Yeaaaahh. But before you start screaming, Gawker has a more cathartic way for you to excise your anger. They want you to write the first page of her upcoming book, and they'll reward the writer of the best submission with a big box of books. So grab your Bumpit and get cracking!

*You'd think an author who also is a professor of writing would be able to critically analyze her own writing and be able to tell when she's being a a pompous, patronizing blowhard. Alas, this is not always the case. And so, when the aforementioned writer+professor sends "the world's haughtiest email" to her former students, you just know it's fated to go viral.