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Not totally up-to-date as far as the more recent years go (e.g., 2002), but interesting for the historical content, or something like that.  1981’s bestselling novel was by James Clavell, and the bestselling non-fiction book was a diet book.  1919’s bestselling novel was The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by V. Blasco Ibanez (which, if you’re interested, you can read thanks to Project Gutenberg).

Bestselling info from Publisher’s Weekly, and hosted web-side by Publisher’s Lunch.

Much fun.  Background & info on literary hoaxes spanning over 200 years (though only by virtue of the two examples that come from the 1700s; the rest are from the mid- to late- 1900s).

Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree
One of the stranger hoaxes. Published in 1977, Forrest Carter’s celebrated memoir about a Cherokee orphan who fights racism and struggles to connect with his heritage was later revealed to have been written by a white Ku Klux Klan member named Asa Carter. (In more recent reprints, The Education of Little Tree was labeled “fiction.”) Carter had previously worked for Alabama Governor George Wallace, penning his infamous inauguration speech, in which Wallace vowed: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw a line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.”

(via CBC Arts & Entertainment: “Writing Wrongs,” by Rachel Giese [Jan 12, 2006])

A fun play, not actually affiliated with Quentin Tarantino (as you might suspect).

Socrates: Maybe I should frame my theory a bit more emphatically. [Drawing his gun.] Didn’t you ever hear of the face that launched a thousand… boats?

Alcibiades: Uh…

Socrates: WELL?

Alcibiades: Yeah.

Socrates: Well, how’d you like me to launch your face?

Alcibiades: Uh…

Socrates: Ahh, I guess that example cleared up all your objections then. [Points weapon at Aristotle] You don’t have any problems with that, do you?

Aristotle: Hey, man, it’s cool. Cool. Boats are cool by me. I was just on a boat recently.

Read the whole thing here. Mad props to whatever forgotten site I originally got this link from, my apologies.

Provided by nature.com, scientific articles and such, with titles like “Clues to the functions of mammalian sleep” and “What are the memory sources of dreaming?”

And a whole host of other postal acronyms you didn’t even know existed.

(STRVN = Stravenue, LF = Loaf, DVD = Divide)

Ask your doctor for a reason to take it.

No, really! A recent study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry,found that pathological liars have signifiicant, actual differences in their brains (compared to normal, non-lyin’ folks); namely, the pathological liars had “increased prefrontal white matter volumes and reduced grey/white ratios compared with normal controls”.

My background is weak enough that I don’t quite have a grasp of what this means, and I’m at least marginally uncomfortable with a scientific study showing “abnormalities” with a marginalized/socially unacceptable group of people, but I’m still fascinated by the matter. And eager to see any developments that might come of it.

An interesting side-note in the study: “[l]iars… had significantly higher verbal relative to performance IQ compared with both control groups”. (The “both” controls being mentioned are the standard control & the anti-social non-lying control, FYI.)

(Ref: Yang, Y., et al. (2005). Prefrontal white matter in pathological liars. British Journal of Psychiatry, 187, 320-325.; props also to the Abc.au.net/Reuters article that mentioned the BJP article.; article also referenced in NewScientist: “Liars’ brains make fibbing come naturally,” by Celeste Biever [September 30, 2005])

So here’s another thought on the origins of the whole mad cow thing:

BSE may have started in cattle because they ate imported animal feed that included infected human remains from Hindu funeral ceremonies in India, a controversial new theory on the origin of the disease suggested last night.

Obviously there’s lots of controversy regarding the idea, and the origins may well never be known. But speculation is inherently interesting.

(Guardian: “Theory ties vCJD to Indian funerals,” by James Meikle and Randeep Ramesh [September 2, 2005])

…will be a crazily discordant year. Ancient prophecies will allegedly be fulfilled, and new ones will be made, daily, in the papers and magazines and things the kids are reading these days. Fish will fall from the sky, but only where they feel like it. Meaningless statistics will litter television commercials, and commercialism will creep even further into stray spots of emptiness in the world. Emptiness will hide in noise.

Blood will be shed unnecessarily. “Shed,” or “spilled,” because that makes it seem passive and non-violent. Tears will flow, but out of necessity. A thing called money will dig deeper into the souls of the converted. War will be abstracted by men talking about principle, and by some women. Hail will crush grains, and glaciers will melt. Asphalt will crack. Buildings will continue to rise up. Las Vegas will find itself caught up in a sudden water conservation movement, or maybe not.

Technology will make tinier and tinier that which occupies us more and more. We’ll be constantly surprised, by everything. We’ll be deluded, by everyone and ourselves.

My one New Year’s Resolution will be to become a pathological liar, and I will fail.

But you will have no way of knowing.