Fast Takes…

Here are some of the things we’ve been microblogging about over the last week or so.

• Today is Salman Rushdie’s birthday. Here’s the interview we did with him back in 2002. An interesting side note: January art director, David Middleton, did a photo shoot with Rushdie with predictably smashing results. And one of the unexpected results: Middleton’s Rushdie images continue to be among the top stolen from January’s pages since the piece was initially published. Other favorites: Middleton’s portraits of Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, The Given Day) and überchef Emeril Lagasse.

• RIP poet David Bromige (via @globebooks )

• From Gawker: Che’s Granddaughter Just Like Che: Naked, Covered in Produce

• Unreality Magazine brings us the 10 most polarizing movies of the past decade. (via Largehearted Boy.)

• Does language shape our thinking? (Maybe yes. Maybe no.)

• Stuart Woods in named new editor of Quill & Quire. (Bookishly awesome.)

• The Times Online talks about how Stephen King’s inner demons have shaped his writing career.

• NPR on the Dictionary of Regional English and the fact that Art Creation is Up and Attendance Down. (Implications are vast, when you think about it.)

• National Geographic on what “Persian” means to Iranians.

• LifeDev looks at eight ways that reading makes you better at life.

• And is it getting to be 3-Day Novel writing time again already? Well, time to think about it, anyway. (If thinking about it is what you’re planning.)