Writers have long lamented that television and video are killing reading and book. But video now offers a great way to get the word out about your book. It’s relatively inexpensive to create a great looking book trailer that can be distributed across the Internet for free.

Vladimir Nabokov declared that “Don Quixote” was “cruel and crude” and that “Death in Venice” was “asinine” His onetime friend Edmund Wilson, on the basis of “The Trial” and “The Castle,” said he found it “impossible” to take Kafka seriously as a “major writer.”

What book gets your vote for being the most overrated?

So, who says drugs and alcohol aren't useful? For one thing, they're responsible for some of the world's greatest literature. Here are 5 classics written under the influence.

Bonus Feature: Writers Are the Craziest People – odd but true facts about some famous names in literature.

At lunch with editors, on the phone with writers, on the editorial page of Publishers Weekly, the news is all the same: the only news this fall will be political. The “deciders” in New York have concluded that we’ll all be so consumed with who goes to Washington that everything else will be pushed aside.

Phooey. I’m already sick of it. Who gorges on political books anyway? Fess up.

Good news, perhaps, for would-be authors who fear their work has been forever lost in the hard-copy slush pile ("Oops, I seem to have filed the unsolicited manuscripts in the recycling bin!"), for with the launch of HarperCollins' Authonomy, the pile not only goes online, it goes (apparently) democratic.

Apparently. At any rate, it’s a great way to keep unsolicited slush out of the house.

I’m happy to see The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks and the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny made this list. Both would make great movies IMO. But if I had to choose just one it would be the latter. There is some grand special effects potential there. Opinions?

Amazon shipped its Kindle e-Book reader way back in November of last year. Since then, the company has tried to paint a picture of runaway success by suggesting that the incredible popularity of the device prevents the company from keeping up with orders. Is the Amazon the Kindle really a secret failure?

I don't mean to be too hard on Harriet - I'm sure she's sincere, and really does read and critique six books a day. But when I was writing THE PREFECT, and needed a handy index by which to measure the prefects' ability to speed-read, the name "Klausner" couldn't help but jump to mind.

From a seemingly infinite list of books of anecdotal or literal merit, we have narrowed down the top 100 books that have shaped the lives of individual men while also helping define broader cultural ideas of what it means to be a man.

So if you feel the need to reaffirm your manliness, here are a hundred manly books that ought to do the trick. Ahem

The Litblog Co-Op is shutting down. This is a pity, because the LBC was a remarkable conduit for many overlooked authors to receive dutiful attention often denied them by more traditional outlets.