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Charles Dickens

"The nice thing about life is that there's always tomorrow." So said Jonathan Safran Foer at Melbourne's Wheeler Centre last Sunday. I was devastated I couldn't make it but thank goodness for the power of technology.

Talking of which, it seems we have Steve Jobs' obsession with death to thank for his myriad great inventions in life.

If murder mysteries are your thing, take this list of brilliant British crime writing down to the beach this weekend, otherwise have a gander at the "Which George Eliot heroin are you?" quiz.

If you're spending your days contemplating how to be a great writer (something I do regularly) Haruki Murakami will tell you in his newly-translated-into-English book 1Q84 and for more advice here is a gorgeous interview with Kazuo Ishiguro by The Paris Review.

Poet Tomas Tranströmer has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which apparently has a rather chequered past.

Charles Dickens is going global for his two hundredth birthday and here is an endearing little "to do" list, and a letter written by Johnny Cash to his wife.