Stephen King weighs in on the practice of blurbing ("A tour de force!") for Entertainment Weekly. ''Never blurb a book you've read and never read a book you've blurbed," advises his "cynical writer acquaintance." And did you know? The back-of-cover blurb, these days, is less about how good the book is and more about who the author can wrangle to write a few lines of faint praise! (King would know. He confesses to having blurbed about a hundred books!) Well, here's the back cover for Son of Hope: the Prison Journals of David Berkowitz, aka the Son of Sam serial killer. You'd have to be a saint to blurb him — all he got was some priests!

The life of a chimp raised on the Upper West Side is detailed in Elizabeth Hess's Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human. They took little Nim away from the wild while he was still nursing and imported him to New York — and it's all Noam Chomsky's fault! The 1970s experiment was part of an effort to disprove the linguist's assertion that non-humans were "fundamentally incapable of language." Heartbreakingly, Nim was shipped away from his beloved New York family after a year and a half, when the project's funding ran out. "He would just look at pictures of his New York City family, and himself, over and over again." Salon interviews the author, who dishes on Nim's relationship with an ex-circus chimp...

Anne of Green Gables, the story of Prince Edward Island's favorite redheaded waif published in 1908, celebrates its 100th anniversary with an essay by author/poet Margaret Atwood. Here's to all the Gilbert Blythes out there, and to breaking a slate over their heads! [Guardian]

The latest rash of blogger book deals includes, from the Skull-A-Day blog, a tome with "images of the skulls [made] from candy, sparklers and other bric-a-brac." Literary agent: "If I contact [a blogger] or [a blogger] is put in touch with me, chances are they've already been contacted by another agent. Or they've at least thought about turning their blog into a book or some kind of film or TV project." [Times]

The Sunday Times included an essay on how certain books can be major turnoffs while dating, and already 162 people have posted their own "literary dealbreakers" to an nytimes.com blog post. There's also a follow up blog post, a follow-up column and of course blogger reaction (former Gawker Emily Gould has two posts up so far). Consensus turnoffs include anything by Ayn Rand (huge among business executives, in my experience), Da Vinci Code, Bridges of Madison County and the Harry Potter series. Also, no one seems to be making allowances for gifts from parents and friends and, hello, book sales, which might be the only reason some of us have David Guterson, Barack Obama, James Frey and, uh, maybe Imus on our shelves, OK? Not that there's any need to be defensive; listening to other people try and justify their literary chauvinism tends to be more entertaining than threatening, especially if they're strangers. After the jump, some of the best posts, and some of the most insane posts, from the Times' literary turnoffs discussion thread.

Just what is Cthulhu? Is horror writer H.P. Lovecraft's creation a scary monster from deep space? From the distance past? Another dimension? For former Star Trek: The Next Generation star and top-notch nerd blogger Wil Wheaton, it's cake.

Being a poet might mean you die young. In fact, writing in general is not good for your lifespan, James Kaufman writes in his study of 1,987 authors from different cultures. Published in 2003, it's titled, "The Cost of the Muse: Poets Die Young." It isn't the first study to make such claims! The Education Guardian reports, "a 1975 study found that poets tended to die younger than fiction writers."

Dave Eggers, author and founder of exhaustingly clever literary mag McSweeney's, is curating an art show! It opens next Wednesday at apexart. (We'll be there with bells on; we hear there will be a Basquiat.) UnBeige says, "according Eggers, the show ended up consisting of 'usually very basic or crude' drawings that are accompanied by hand-drawn text that functions like a funny caption." Muses Eggers in the press release, "Is humor allowed in art, and in what forms? Are captions allowed in art, and why?" Captions! If that's not art, we don't know what is. Click to see this work by David Shrigley, writ large. [via UnBeige]

Who has a stalker? The "recovering editorial assistant" behind Editorial Ass has a stalker! "An unsolicited author came into our offices looking for me. I have no idea how he got my name—I'd never met him before. But he came in asking for me by name and carrying his unsolicited manuscript. Now he has somehow learned my direct [phone] line..." Some of the following rules may be obvious to you; for instance, "never show up in person at a publishing company." Also, you're gonna want to put down that phone.

For her Atlantic Monthly blog, early econ-blogger Megan McArdle talks about Skinny Bitch, the insanely popular health-fad book that's a vegan diatribe in disguise. She hates on it in the best of ways:

It's still surprisingly hard to get rid of books, even if they are supposed to be redundant. Here are six bookcase designs for the book-loving pack-rat:

To publicize the re-release of teen fiction series Sweet Valley High, Random House Children's Books sent a letter to journalists highlighting the changes made to the content of the 1980s paperbacks. New cover girl Leven Rambin (pictured) was not mentioned, but just to make sure preteen and teenaged girl readers are sufficiently insecure about their bodies, the publisher made the "perfect" clothing size a couple of notches more restrictive. It seems kids in the 80s lived by totally fat standards. Also, Sweet Valley High students now have their own anonymous blog, presumably to hatefully bully the fattest of their classmates. Here's a helpful chart from the Random House letter, followed by the letter itself:

From Nancy Drew to cult fave Weetzie Bat to yes, those blonde Californian Wakefield twins of Sweet Valley High that soapy social Lev Rambin recently impersonated, all have undergone frequent makeovers to keep their covers looking fresh to new generations of young adult readers. Print has an article about the ever-changing cover designs of classic YA literature. Check out, for example, the different covers of Judy Blume novel about s-e-x, Forever.

Fox News has an article on How to Live Longer, tips from The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest author Dan Buettner. A few suggestions: "Give away your normal-sized dinner plates and replace them with 9" ones." "Weigh yourself every day for two years. You'll loose (sic) 17 pounds." Actually, death sounds more fun.

The British author of the Harry Potter series will appear in court in an attempt to stop American publisher RDR books from publishing an "encyclopedia" of the literary wizard-world she created for Harry Potter. We agree, that is obnoxious of them, especially since she was planning on creating a similar guide herself. [Times Online]

Tech publisher O'Reilly Media has released a book targeted to unsanctioned developers on Apple's iPhone mobile platform. iPhone Open Application Development tells coders how to write programs for "jailbroken" iPhones — those that have been hacked to remove Apple's block on unsanctioned software. All of which seems outdated, now that Apple has released instructions for writing approved apps. O'Reilly will surely rush out another book on that subject. But why not just sell one book to everyone? That seems easier.

Remember when A.C. Slater used to strut around The Max in his orange short shorts and sweat-drenched wrestling muscle tees? All while dousing the rest of the cast with the greasy goo dangling from his curly mullet? And how much it kinda grossed you out to the point where you decided from then on you would never, under any circumstances, be attracted to dimpled, mullet-wearing wrestlers? Well, Defamer would like to officially announce that things have changed. Mario Lopez is no longer a bicycle-pants wearing meathead, he's a bonafide contestant for Best Male Body In The Universe. And he's got a new workout book to prove it! But we decided to go ahead and compare the original AC to the new and improved Mario, just to clarify exactly how far he's come. The before and afters, in all their muscly glory, after the jump:

In the Guardian, Tom Sykes, author of addiction memoir What Did I Do Last Night?, tells us how his publisher, along with a lawyer, made him fact-check his memoir: by sending the manuscript to everyone mentioned, including his drug dealer! Some of these people, while accurately described, were pissed. Especially Chris Wilson, formerly of Page Six and currently of Maxim!

The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes landed on our desk today, and damned it we couldn't use a laugh right now! But are there any to be had? The first bad sign is the book's design: the back of the book, with bar code, etc., is actually on the front. Ha-ha. Get it? And then, on the other side, there is a raw chicken (turkey?) leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette through the hole left by its decapitated head. Uh... We'll excerpt a few jokes, and you may decide if they're funny, or just funny-heh.

Did you hear about that hot new internet blog, "Stuff White People Like"? Did someone email or GChat you a link to it? Or did many people? Chances are you either had a knowing chuckle or got all huffy about it, as those seem to be most people's responses. We've gone through the criticisms both whiny—I'm white and I'm nothing like this!—and smart—boy their definition of "white people" is offensively narrow and classist—and now we're sick of those too, even though we sort of agree with them but also are all "lay off, it's a stupid blog." There's the fucking rub: we dislike the site and are sick of everyone disliking the site. Which is why we were so excited to see that they got ten zillion dollars to turn it into a book! A book about hockey, and Miracle Whip! Except not really, because only like middle American White People like those things, see, and there's that class argument we didn't want to get into. No, this book is actually about Juno or some such bullshit.