I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. ~Abraham Lincoln

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? ~Pablo Casals

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography. ~George Santayana

I love America. I love the world. Brotherhood and sisterhood have no borders. My heart orbits the Earth, love cannot be measured in longitude or latitude. ~Valentine Sterling

To him in whom love dwells, the whole world is but one family. ~Buddha

I have no sense of nationalism, only a cosmic consciousness of belonging to the human family. ~Rosika Schwimmer

What you love you empower
and what you fear you empower
and what you empower you attract.

~unknown

What fortune for the governments that people do not think. - Adolph Hitler

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.-Anne Frank

"Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive."

-Pema Chodron

Listmania! A list of the net's many, many 'Best Books of 2009' lists can be found here.



This one's for the gossip fiends: What book was in Tiger's car when he crashed? The answer is...here.



Kinda-sorta sister-lists to the first link: Ozaku's and The Precious Curmudgeon's lists of Manga Gift Guide Lists.



Author/trench coat model Neil Gaiman thinks that the 'death of audiobooks' is just a case of folks talking out their asses.



Wired skewers a modern-day classic with 'The Top 20 Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn From Twilight.' Now with video!



Jonathan Littell has won the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction award for his 900-page novel, The Kindly Ones. The passage that cinched the win compared vaginas to various Greek mythological creatures including the snake-haired Gorgon and "a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks." Sexy!


Bonus Link: A half-dozen super cute, lit-themed, Twitter avatars are available free of charge(!) on Adam 'The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats' Koford's Flickr page.

Hey folks,

Been working really hard on this month's update of the Hipster Book Club. There's a ton of cool reviews and articles, but the most important thing is the 2009 holiday gift guide!

Thanks to everyone who submitted info on whom you're buying gifts for. This year, we have over 200 books on the gift list--our biggest ever.

Please don't forget to click on our links to Powell's, IndieBound, and Amazon before you make your online purchases. If you do, we'll get a small commission that'll help keep the HBC going in 2010.

Thanks for all of the support, everyone, and happy holidays!