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You know what the best thing about having interns is? You can get them to do your work for you have the privilege of teaching them what you know, and watching them grow professionally. This week, we bring you a special Linked Up, written by publicity interns extraordinaire, Alexandra McGinn and Hanna Oldsman. Be sure to check back next week for my (awesome/hilarious) Q & A with them.

I think I may want to move to Japan and make pizza. [Reuters]

The Good News: Thanksgiving isn’t a reason to break up. The Bad News: Christmas comes shortly after Thanksgiving. [Popfi]

I’m more of a Garamond type of girl myself. [Not Cot]

If you’re still in a candy coma from Halloween it’s time to let the goods go.

The Shining’s not so scary in Lego form. [Flickr]

Obama the Grinch Steals Christmas In Tea Party Picture Book [Gawker]

Commute via holograph? Yes please! [Wired]

C the difference? [Virtual Linguist]

Van Gogh would have bought an iPad. [BBC]

Which literary character is a Facebook addict? [Salon]

I want to talk about YA books for girls in the 1980s. Books like Anastasia Ask Your Analyst, and The Girl with the Silver Eyes.

Besides PBS and the Thundercats, these books were pretty much the only media I had available during my nerdy nerdy youth. And since I hadn’t been sentient for too long, so they had a disproportionate impact on my social development.

I wasn’t alone. The fine ladies at Jezebel (One of those Gawker media blogs. I’m usually against ‘em. This one, however doesn’t suck.) do a recurring feature called Fine Lines, which is UNCANNY in its ability to suss out YA books from my misspent youth.

I checked out an average of 14 books a week from two different local libraries, thanks to my geek parents. Most of the books I read were comic anthologies like Peanuts, Bloom County, Garfield and (odd for a 12 year old) Doonesbury. However, the books that really got through were the ones like Island of the Blue Dolphins, or From the mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankeweiler.

Fine Lines has them all, lovingly glossed and tinted with a healthy dose of grown-up lady perspective. Go. Go now. Read and remember. You were not alone.

By this time next week, retired Gawker writer Emily Gould's long essay "Exposed" will have been batted around every literary blog in the neighborhood. Her writing about blogging has already stirred up six-hundred readers.

No matter what you think about the whole over-blogged debate, you should read it. It's an intimate look at how the writing world works nowadays, and the prose is pretty addictive.

When you are finished reading, you should turn off your computer-screen.

We've spent all week writing about writing, and then we spent more time reading comments written about writing about writing. None of it will fill your writing note-book. Go find something beautiful in the real world. Write about that. 

If you need some writing therapy, check out this YouTube clip over at Elegant Variation. It's novelist John Berger introducing his book about art--Ways of Seeing. Around the six-minute mark, Berger looks at a gorgeous painting in a Renaissance chapel. He reminds us to slow down and think about the cosmic frame that used to surround these works of art--an amazing lesson for our over-blogged imaginations.

Watch the video here: “Behind its image is God. Before it, believers close their eyes, the don’t need to go on looking at it. They know it marks the place of meaning.”

Happy snowy Friday to all! Grab a cup of hot cocoa, snuggle up with a blanket and your laptop and start surfing these links.

Don’t look now but your media job may just be running for the hills.

Sing it loud Egan so Steve Jobs can hear you, books are not dead!

The Best of the Bookers.

Curious about art theft?  A reformed stolen-art dealer tells all. (more…)

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On this awesome mention in Gawker. Yes, I thought about buying the T Shirt; but then I wondered, would I have the balls to wear it?

.... how about wearing it to the Newbery Dinner? (Of course, I don't have my ticket, so it's not a possibility. But imagine if we all wore one...)

Since it's OK for me to post gossip, here is Gawker's report on the YA Author Prom. Guess what? YA authors write YA because of "unresolved high school issues." And apparently? There is a "YA AUTHOR SCANDALSHEET WEEKLY." And John Green is loved by all. But we knew that!

Meanwhile, also courtesy of Gawker, Blogs Can Bring Down The New York Times!

Edited to add: Hey Gawker shows up in the Brotherhood 2.0 video of prom! And before I start complaining about my lack of invite to "the social event of the Young Adult calendar," let me say -- I couldn't have made it anyway. But I will see you all at the Printz reception. And I'm still trying to track down that scandalsheet.....

And more hot! Prom! Gossip! the Longstockings look smashing and e.lockhart has more photos!

Gawker offers up an analysis of some non-blogger book reviews: Plot Summaries Rampant in the NYTBR: Are the Nice People Even Trying?

As Monica explains, there's this whole campaign to save print book reviews. Colleen has blogged about it, also.

Gawker weighs in with the deliciously titled, Why Johnny Can't Read: Is Campaign to Save Book Reviewing Just About Saving The Status Quo?

Yes, I know Gawker's description is Gawker, daily Manhattan media news and gossip. But it is so much more. Such as, did you know that Ice Cream Sundaes Are Yummy?

A woman who used to write for Gawker reveals that “….I deemed [someone] an “utterly ridiculous twit.” I called Jessica Simpson a “young skanklet,” and I shamelessly crowned an obnoxious publicist the “Most Abhorrent New Yorker” of that week. I even suggested that one middle-aged tabloid editor, known for her over-the-top coverage of celebrity body “flaws,” should look into buying an underwire bra.”

But she starts out the article about her past life as a blogger by complaining, “I’ve been called a bitch, a hack, a wannabe, a fake and a freak, but never once to my face. In fact, I doubt that even half the people insulting me ever uttered their words out loud - the jabs were all served up online, where acting like an outraged lunatic is de rigueur. Ask anyone who writes anything online, and they’ll have a story to tell about the sheer meanness of the virtual world. Here’s mine.”

How is being called a fake or a freak worse than calling someone a ridiculous twit? She did have worse things happen to her, like having someone post her home address and cell phone number. But I still think this is partly a case of the pot calling the kettle black. There are real people behind the words we throw around, and we all need to remember that.

What do you think? Read more here.

When will people start treating the most talented bloggers like real literary figures?

The journal n+1 has a smart look at the rise of the website Gawker, giving each of the founding authors a critique that would make any literature professor proud. It's a valuable lesson on the evolution of webby style of bloggers like Choire Sicha:

"Like a Method gossip, Sicha had a natural fluency in spin and slipped almost lyrically into the voices of the subjects he intended to critique. When he felt that these subjects, out of restraint or lack of imagination, hadn’t pushed their blurbs far enough, Sicha obligingly did it for them ... At times his insults and his humor, in the language he imitated, were so subtly placed that they could be missed completely."

Still, not everybody can be as mean as they are. Myself included. Dan Blank has an interesting article about a kinder, gentler model for web writing, the enthusiasm-driven approach.

He uses stereo equipment writers as his model, showing how amateurs and experts share the stage in this bustling web community. Check it out: 

"Never lose site of the key elements that the audience is passionate about. To build community, start small and focus on the one item that gets people excited. For all the time I spend with my stereo “hobby,” it is still all about the music." (Thanks, Chris Webb)