I loved this Gawker quote about the “ironic trailer park” they are building in Bushwick: “Every year they add a new level to the Dantean inferno that is artistic living in Brooklyn.”

Lit.

• “What a wonderful thing it is, that such a great success should occasion me such intolerable anxiety and disappointment!” Charles Dickens on A Christmas Carol.  The Guardian discusses why the book didn’t give the writer a surplus of holiday cash.

• Taschen will bring you back to the glory days of Playboy Magazine for about a thousand bucks.

• January Magazine on the best unread books of the decade.

• Over at Lit Drift, Andrew Boryga discusses reading The Brothers Karamazov in high school.

• At Granta, Helen Simpson and Blake Morrison pick their best books of the year.

Tunes.

• Todd P doesn’t want to make SXSW look any cooler, so he wants to go to Mexico.

• At Stereogum, Brendan Stosuy gives us the best metal albums of ’09.

The holidays

• Maud Newton tells us pretty much everything we need to know about Christmas.

• In Sweden, they watch Donald Duck on Christmas Eve.

On the big screen and the small.

• PBS to be rated by Nielsen.

• It’s not good geek etiquette to ogle the abs of Sherlock.

Writings

• A letter from Rick Moody at Fictionaut.
  

• Jami Attenberg’s “Crutch” up at Five Chapters.