Short stories, short films, because life is short

O Cambridge, you have ruined my attention span with your insatiable demands for varied and conflicting bits of work! Plus there's nothing good on TV now Primeval has finished. I recommend:
1. Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners and Stranger Things Happen. (NB the latter is a small press book and page 188 has accidentally got replaced by page 118. Let's all forgive them because they put the page here in pdf. Plus you can read the whole book for free.)
2. Julie Orringer, How to Breathe Underwater. I've only read the first story so far. Well-written. Potentially upsetting.
3. Philip K. Dick's Human Is? It's on 3 for 2 at Borders. I haven't read it yet, but it's bound to be good.
4. Lorrie Moore is amazing. Her Birds of America has this incredible story called "People like that are the only people here".
5. Michel Faber's The Fahrenheit Twins. Brilliant. I only remembered half-way through that it was the same bloke who wrote The Crimson Petal and the White. I wouldn't otherwise have guessed. Though I enjoyed the novel too. He wrote a collection of little stories about the Crimson Petal characters too, for those who wanted to find out what happened to Sugar and that lumpen kid, called The Apple I think. I haven't read them.
6. Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors. I have a secret weakness for geeks, you see. Some of these stories just make you think Oh you geek you! but some are really brilliant. There's this excellent story which is only about a page long called "In the End" and it's just the Genesis creation story in reverse (the one with the apple) and it makes me want to cry though I don't know why that is.
7. Jane Stevenson's collections of novellas, especially Several Deceptions.
8. Anything by Rose Tremain, Tibor Fischer, or Kurt Vonnegut

And also you could watch Mark Ronson fusing The Smiths, Kim Wilde, and a pair of evil shoes, which I have embedded below for your pleasure. If you want to hear some of his other cover versions (I rather like his Toxic) he has a myspace page. Or to see Britney showing Scooch how to wear those uniforms before going to full Sidney Bristow mode see here.