Guardian: “A video posted today on an Islamist militant website appeared to show a group affiliated with al-Qaida beheading an American contractor in Iraq, saying the death was revenge for the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers.”

Following up on Ernest Vincent Wright’s Gasby: A Story of Over 50,000 Words Without Using the Letter “E”, Michel Thaler has written a novel without verbs. Which begs the question: can a novel resembling the Incredible Hulk’s vernacular remain captivating for 250 pages?

A list of epistolary fiction.

War letters.

Famous Love Letters: Includes Napoleon, Robert Browning, Lord Byron, Samuel Clemens, Honore de Balzac, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and more.

“Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter Writing” by Charles Dodgson

Emily Post on Longer Letters: “The art of general letter-writing in the present day is shrinking until the letter threatens to become a telegram, a telephone message, a post-card. Since the events of the day are transmitted in newspapers with far greater accuracy, detail, and dispatch than they could be by the single effort of even Voltaire himself, the circulation of general news, which formed the chief reason for letters of the stage-coach and sailing-vessel days, has no part in the correspondence of to-day.”

Einstein’s letters to FDR.

The letters of Henry James.

The letters of Jane Austen.

The history of Rasputin’s penis (and its forgeries), before it hit St. Petersburg.

One man’s quest to recreate the Karate Kid shower costume. (via Pop Culture Junk Mail)

[Related Link: The Ralph Macchio Homepage, “a wholehearted tribute to the greatest actor of the 20th century.”]