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Well, shoot. It's all my fault.

In his essay this weekend for the New York Times, David Streitfeld says it's people like me who are causing the demise of the publishing industry.

"Don't blame this carnage on the recession or any of the usual suspects, including increased competition for the reader's time or diminished attention spans," he says. "What's undermining the book industry is not the absence of casual readers but the changing habits of devoted readers."

Streitfeld goes on to say that he now buys books online - and not through Amazon, but through other independent sources that offer novels for as little as a penny. This deprives publishing houses, bookstores, and authors of the moneys they would otherwise be entitled to.

Fine. So maybe this could be a blow to the industry in general, but it's not going to end literature. The supply-demand equilibrium for pretty much everything is being redefined right now because of the Internet and the economy. After years of bitching and moaning about Napster, the music industry finally seems to have found its compromise with the advent of a buck-per-song on iTunes. Real Writers will keep writing regardless of whether they get paid big advances or not, and theoretically, Real Readers will keep reading.

The end of Streitfeld's essay is actually kind of uplifting, as he speaks about a woman whom he bought a book from:

"She told me via e-mail that her real name was Heather Mash and that she worked as a domestic violence case manager in a women's shelter not too far from Berkeley. She didn't set out to subvert the publishing and bookselling world, she said. Like most of us who sell online, Ms. Mash began because she had too many books and wanted to raise money to buy more. "I would rather sell a book for a penny and let someone enjoy it than keep it collecting dust," she said."

So, because it's the end of the year and everyone else is doing lists, I'm doing one, too: The Five Best Things I Read for Free in 2008. In this millennium, lists of ten are just too long.

5. "Live in Nanny Needed for 4 kids (Pls don't call them 'Precious Ones')"

This is a craigslist ad posted by a woman in New York looking for a nanny for her kids. Maybe the most honest call for applications ever. "My kids are a pain in the ass," it begins. "Just in the past hour, i have had to tell each one to do something more than once. oldest: can i have soda? it's just a sprite? please? can i? no, no and no.
the next one...don't even get me started. seriously."

4. ?uestlove's Twitter blog

The drummer from The Roots updates on the minutia of his life. I don't think he sleeps, actually. For the uninitiated, Twitter posts can only be 140 characters, and ?uest writes these stream-of-consciousness narratives that end up taking entire pages of the site, in which he dogs on lame concerts he's at, or talks about playing Uno with his family.

3. MinnPost's "The Daily Glean"

David Brauer really does cover everything I need to know about Minnesota. Somehow, in his blurbs, he's able to get across humor, sympathy, snark, and (most importantly) news. The column has become a must-read for me on weekday mornings.

2. "A Better Angel," by Chris Adrian.

This was published in The New Yorker in 2006, but the collection came out this year, and I re-read this story online a few times because it's fantastic. A dude meant for greatness goes against his guardian angel and develops a drug addiction, and then takes care of his dying father. Throughout, his angel watches over him, becoming more and more beautiful.

1. "CALM THE FUCK DOWN! The JOHNSTON is in..."

A friend who pretty much does nothing except sit online all day and find entertaining stuff gchat'd this over to me. It was posted the day after the vice presidential debate, and is written in the incredibly convincing voice of Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin's daughter's baby. Comes loaded with such gems as

Okay now, the last thing before I...god DAMN FUCK I am so high right now. You ever take like 4 oxycottons and you just realize how powerful you are? Like you can feel it and you can feel all that nature shit flowin through you and you realize we are just animals? I mean damn. I never felt that shit normally, but it's true.

I am a fuckin eagle motherfuckers. What? WHAT??? That is what I fuckin THOUGHT.

It's practically literature.

Happy New Year, y'all.