All My Friends Were Vampires

Anybody else noticed that vampires are suddenly everywhere? It's like the early 90s all over again. These things are always cyclical. On with the links:

• Via Kottke.org comes the thrilling news that Brad Pitt will star in the film adaptation of Moneyball.
  

• Kottke.org was full of great finds this morning, including this interesting list of books that inspired graphic designers (no design books allowed). Among them: Play It As It Lays, Infinite Jest, and Hunger.

• "In reality, The White Tiger reads like the first draft of a Bollywood screenplay (no romance or songs sadly). Every character is a cliché: the scheming servant, the corrupt politician, the alluring master's wife. The humour is bitter and unsubtle; the writing forgettable." Let's see...with no romance and no songs, I don't think you have a Bollywood screenplay (also, the hero doesn't find his mother - who he long assumed to be dead - blind and begging in a Caclutta market); the scheming servant would be the main character, a richly-drawn, multifaceted person who acts in all kinds of unpredictable ways; the corrupt politician is seen only briefly and serves as a plot point and little else; and the master's wife didn't seem alluring in the least to me. I will say that the humor is bitter (and abundant), but that would be, um, the point, I think. I disagree with Mr. Rahim -- buy The White Tiger. In fact, buy it here.

• See, I'm not a loser, I'm a late bloomer.