This Week’s Reading, 01.7.12

Alan Moore and his new short films, the importance of The Reader Organisation, an interview with Kurt Vonnegut and more.

• Leader image: Detail from Richard Dadd’s ‘Fairy-Feller’s Master-Stroke’. Full image here.

• The bizarre deaths of some famous authors, including the mystery surrounding Edgar Allan Poe, Christopher Marlowe’s violent end and Mark Twain’s spooky prediction.

• Alan Moore is to collaborate with director Mitch Jenkins on a series of short films.

• Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 300th birthday.

• The Reader Organisation: Highlighting the importance of reading to society.

• Depicting ‘life without Internet, flat-screen televisions, or air conditioning’, Heather Benning creates a life-size Dollhouse.

• A Lawyer asks for time off from a murder trial to enter a Hemingway look-a-like competition.

• Both Willie Smith’s Nothing Doing and Linda Ann Strang’s Wedding Underwear for Mermaids were reviewed this week by Grady Harp.

• Wes Anderson’s latest movie Moonrise Kingdom ‘stars a girl with a suitcase full of awesome-sounding (and totally made up) books’. Here are 10 fake books from the movies…if only we could read them.

• A short story by Ian Shearer.

• The Ohio River Project tries to spread a little creativity.

• ‘British fiction is a living, changing thing’: Fiction Uncovered announces Best of British titles 2012.

• Kurt Vonnegut talks about the importance of reading and writing