Today marks the release of Ben Marcus’s long-awaited fourth novel, The Flame Alphabet, in which language becomes lethal, estranging families, turning children (who are solely immune) into something resembling packs of wild dogs, and requiring everyone’s complicity in a sort of social apocalypse brought on by an inability to communicate. Needless to say, the concept that language may turn toxic and slowly kill off its users is relatively terrifying for us, so we’ve put together a short guide on the most frightening fictional afflictions in literature — and more importantly, how to avoid them. Click through for a quick survival lesson, and let us know if you have any more safety tips in the comments.

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1. The nominees for the 54th Annual Grammy Awards have been announced, and Kanye West leads the pack with seven nods; hot on his heels are Adele, Bruno Mars, and the Foo Fighters, who each scored six nominations. View the full list of nominees here.

2. Nicholas Cage’s rare copy of “Action Comics” No. 1 — which was stolen from his house in 2000, and later recovered — has been sold at auction for a record-setting $2.1 million. Knowing Cage, he’s sure to spend the money wisely, perhaps on a second pyramid tomb or another castle. [via MTV]

3. Here is your first look at Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln, snapped while the actor was having some lunch while on location in Richmond, Virginia. Looks like Steven Spielberg made a good choice. There’s a rather striking resemblance, wouldn’t you say?

4. A Colombian court has ruled against Miguel Reyes Palencia, a man who claimed that Gabriel García Márquez used his life story as the inspiration for the main character in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and as a result, wanted 50% of the royalties and a co-author credit. [via Guardian]

5. Film critic Roger Ebert says that the recently-revived version of his show At the Movies will be going on an indefinite hiatus in the new year due to financial issues. Funding the project through Kickstarter is one option being considered, but in the meantime Ebert asks, “Please have faith in us as we sort through the possibilities.” [via ArtsBeat]

Bonus Buzz: Modern-Day Garbage Pail Kids

As a fitting finale to National Short Story Month, we asked the talented crew over at One Story to name their ten favorite epigrammatic tales. Tanya Rey, the managing editor, explained via e-mail that their choices are in no particular order, so anti-Salingerists are advised to not get all huffy just because JD leads the list. Tanya writes, “Certain authors (e.g., Cheever, Moore, Johnson, Barthleme) were nominated more than once, for different stories, so we tried to choose the most ‘classic’ of those stories. This was not exactly a scientific or objective process.” However, we stand behind the choices because they’re some of our favorites as well. What do you think, dear readers?

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Information is Beautiful’s David McCandless has compiled the results of more than 15 esteemed book polls, surveys, and lists in order to create a “consensus cloud” of the most frequently chosen titles across the board. The books contained in the cloud range from the products of Pulitzer Prize-winning authors to Oprah’s Bookclub picks, providing an assortment of novels from the English language canon to the books people actually read.

To Kill A Mockingbird seems to be the leader, with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Crime and Punishment not far behind. Catch-22 also is comparatively large, as is Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina. With the prominence of The Lord of the Rings, and His Dark Materials, we seem to be veering into fantasy, and with The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, and two by George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm), we notice the prominence of dystopian fiction.

What do you think? Is this a fair reading guide, or does it skew too much in one direction for your taste? Since McCandless used a number of British lists, do you think it unfairly favors our friends in the UK?

We recently heard that Joan Didion has written a memoir about the experience of aging, a subject that, though unavoidable for most of us, is often relegated to the better-left-ignored category of conversation. Though the aches and pains of aging may feel too far away for some of us, or simply too morbid to broach head-on, here are five works of fiction that elegantly capture the ups and downs of a life relived in retrospect.

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Even some of literature’s most iconic authors were responsible for behavior more befitting a barroom brawl than intellectual provocation. In Writers Gone Wild, Bill Peschel has culled together the most notorious embarrassments, love affairs, and addictions of beloved literary heroes. In honor of the infamous feud that overshadowed recent Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa’s relationship with fellow laureate Gabriel García Márquez for 30 years, here are five other instances where the sword pulverized the less-than-mighty pen.

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In contrast to the widespread puzzlement that characterized Herta Mueller’s Nobel Prize win last year, the international response to Mario Vargas Llosa’s honor is hardly one of surprise. Consistently topping out the Academy’s rumored short-list, the Peruvian author’s long-overdue tribute breaks a Euro-centric spell that has overly privileged European writers in the past six years. It is also the first time since Gabriel García Marquez’s win in 1982 that a South American author has won the prestigious prize — a fact made all the more timely with the recent news of Granta’s first ever “Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” issue.

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The Millions recently posted the very Shteyngart-y opening passage of Gary Shteyngart’s forthcoming novel, Super Sad True Love Story.

“Today I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die. Others will die around me. They will be nullified. Nothing of their personality will remain. The light switch will be turned off.”

It got us thinking about our own favorite beginnings, both recent and classic. Below are some favorites from our bookshelf. Feel free to add your own picks in the comments section.

1. Slumberland by Paul Beatty

Best commentary on “post-blackness” considering Obama wasn’t even president when the book was written:

“You would think they’d be used to me by now. I mean don’t they know that after fourteen hundred years the charade of blackness is over? That we blacks, the once eternally hip, the people who were as right now as Greenwich Mean Time, are, as of today, as yesterday as stone tools, the velocipede, and the paper straw all rolled into one? The Negro is now officially human. Everyone, even the British, says so.”

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1. Blur and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn is in the running for a new gig: artistic director of 2012 Olympics. [via The Independent]
2. With a “$3.5 billion killer debt” MGM is on its way to bankruptcy, putting both The Hobbit and James Bond franchise in peril. [via Nikki Finke]
3. Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is the work that has most shaped world literature over the past 25 years, says a new survey of international writers. [via The Guardian]
4. Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin and the 500 Days of Summer writing team are working on a new series about 20-something love for ABC called Friends With Benefits. [via Variety]
5. Were you as confused by “Project Re-tweet” as Family Ties star Justine Bateman was? We thought Twitter was spamming us. [via Gawker]

Bonus link: A Brief Timeline of Inane Lily Allen Outbursts

Books: Gabriel García Márquez, literary giant, lays down his pen
Dance/Opera: Possibly the Craziest Dance of the Future Ever (video)
Design: Power Your Gadgets with Water
Film: Trio in talks for ‘Inception’
Music: Zooey Deschanel Wants You To Know That She’s Not Katy Perry
Television: The Least Correct ‘Jeopardy!’ Answer I Have Ever Seen
Theatre: A play on paedophilia
Visual Arts: Why Tate Modern’s extension stacks up
Web: University offers social media degree about Facebook, Twitter and Bebo