Environmentally friendly and guilt free, book swapping sites are hugely popular. Aside from the obvious benefits for the trees, book swapping introduces readers to authors they normally wouldn’t have chanced. Not actually purchasing the book apparently lends freedom to the process of choosing the next read. But some authors, such as Jeanette Winterson, are not so keen on the idea.

The misguided ''Golden Compass'' has found its way to DVD -- but it's not the first book-to-big-screen project to veer off course, as fans of ''Da Vinci Code,'' ''Memoirs of a Geisha,'' ''Eyes Wide Shut,'' and%

The more the merrier! That's what I say. Now you can hear me say it live on the Wordsy Podcast.

In an ongoing world-wide poll, Poll The People asks what your top 5 favorite books of all time are.

When I'm not reading I always on the the look out for that next great read. I've had great luck with sites such as Shelfari, LibraryThing and Open Book Toronto. The other other night I came across Juicespot. Readers share opinions on books they've read. Found a couple of suggestions. Nice, simple site too. Worth stopping by.

Philip M. Parker has written over 200,000 books, and all of them have turned a profit. How does he do it? With the magic of computers.

Most of the titles so far are textbooks generated by scripts searching the Internet for information on the subject, but plans are already in hand for a series of romance novels and volumes of poetry.

Some might consider this cheating.

I’m hard pressed to find the perfect adjective for some of these real-life, back-of-the-book questions designed for book club discussion, but the flippant versions penned by Joe Queenan, covering some favorite classic tales, had me chuckling out loud.

This might be a good reason to drop the pen. "The image of the writer as a doomed and sometimes tragic figure, bound to die young, can be backed up by research. Writers die young. This research finding has been consistently replicated in a variety of studies."

They probably starve to death. That would also explain why poets supposedly die younger than fiction writers.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, Peter Straus has compiled a rather in-depth quiz on the prize's history. The winner of the quiz will receive a copy of every title ever chosen to receive the prize. Cool beans!

Phonebooks are books too, and deserving of a nod. Why, their history alone makes them wordsy. They lay claim to the most reproduced book cover of all time, for one thing. And what other book is found in virtually every household, even the vacant ones? As reference works, they’re a barometer of changing times. They command a modest sum on Ebay, and they’re even starring on YouTube.