I was having lunch earlier this week with a powerful literary agent whose name I'm not at liberty to divulge (although it starts with an M, ends with a Y, and rhymes with "sneezy"). We were enjoying mojitos and dungeoness crab claw frittatas while we talked about literary stuff. I admitted to her that I didn't know what I was going to write about in this week's column, and her eyes lit up. She slid a book across the table towards me and winked. "Why don't you talk about this one? Its a great book, we're publishing it in the Fall. Why don't you tell all your readers what a great book it is?"

I opened the book, and there was a $100 bill nestled inside. I looked across the table, and the powerful literary agent winked at me again as she chewed a big mouthful of crab claw frittata.

I had never been so insulted.

I stood up, drained my mojito, drained her mojito, and then slapped the frittata right out of her mouth. I stormed out of Sizzler without even grabbing a mint.

Allow me to take this moment to send a message to all you powerful literary agents: I CANNOT BE BOUGHT SO CHEAPLY! My recommendation is worth way more than a hundred bucks and a free dinner at Sizzler!

To demonstrate Literary Adventure's influence over the bookselling market, and encourage publishers to bribe me more lavishly, I am now going to give positive reviews to the bottom three books on the New York Times Worstseller List. I guarantee that because of this, by next week they will have climbed to the TOP three books on the New York Times Bestseller List.


The Bottom Three Books on the New York Times Worst-Seller List (Soon to be the top three books on the bestseller list):


Ways I Have Toasted my Bread: A Memoir in Seven Volumes
by Michael Kandinski

At seven volumes of six hundred pages each, this set is a real shelf-buster. However the extended format allows Kandinski to really stretch out and explore his subject in depth. Each handsome, leather-bound volume covers one day, and reading the entire set gives you a complete overview of how he ate his toast that week. The full-page engraved chapter openers are particularly handsome.

My only real criticism is that the author prepared his toast exactly the same every day (two slices of wheat, toasted 1 minute and 20 seconds, orange marmalade) SPOILER WARNING: except for Wednesday, when he murdered his parents and spread the jellied remnants of their pulverized brains on the toast.

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I Married an Optometrist
by Elizabeth Burns

This is the sequel to the underrated I Made Out With An Optometrist. Forget everything you THINK you know about optometry, this book is going to blow your preconceptions out of the water--assuming your preconceptions are of the aquatic variety. And for your sake I hope they're not, because if they are, this book is going to BLOW THEM OUT OF THE WATER.

Think optometrists are just normal people like the rest of us? WRONG! That's what Elizabeth Burns thought too--until she married one. She is swiftly drawn into a swirling iris of danger and magic when she discovers her husband is Grand Oculator of an Underworld Optometry Secret Society, full of grey-eyed shamans and colorblind priestesses. They are building a Lasik laser large enough to zap the globe and make everyone myopic. Can the lazy-eyed child with the talking meibomian corneal cyst save her? This book is not intended for young or sensitive readers: it contains intense scenes of corneal abrasion and some pink eye.

Elizabeth Burns has also announced the next and final book in her trilogy of 'tometry: I Divorced an Optometrist and Married a Podiatrist.

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ITCHY: My Battle with Poison Oak
Buzz Polinski

ITCHY chronicles a retired cemetery caretaker's brave battle with Poison Oak. It unblinkingly captures even the most upsetting moments of his inspirational struggle: Dealing with baffled doctors who dont know if it's poison ivy or pigweed rash, running out of caladryl lotion, and trying not to itch it even though it itches SO BAD.

This book will break your heart, then patch your heart up and nurse you back to health. Just when you're on your feet again though, it will unexpectedly push you down a flight of stairs, savagely breaking your heart once more. The book will proclaim haughtily that it never loved you in the first place, and then walk right out the front door, leaving you crying in a crumpled heap on the first floor landing, unable to move.

As your blood seeps into the white shag of the staircase, you'll watch the Autumn wind tickle the leaves on the oak tree outside the open door (the same tree you climbed as a child), and reflect that to everything there is a season. The Byrds cover of the American folksong "Turn! Turn! Turn!" will run through your head, and you'll die weakly humming its melody.