Literary tattoos, Truth vs. Fiction, and Authorial accessories

If you were to permanently mark your body with a literary allusion, what would it be? According to PWxyz, these five books are the most popular among the inked.

PNBA award-winner Jonathan Evison wrote for Northwest Book Lovers a defense of reading and writing, despite “the heartache and frustration, financial duress and the existential discomfort” it often brings. He thanked independent booksellers for their work.

Thank you for your enduring energy and belief in the written word against all financial and cultural odds, for forging that priceless connection between reader and writer, one book at a time. For championing underdogs, and preaching your pets, and yes, for selling us your guilty pleasures, too. Thank you for the benefit of your good taste and expertise. And thank you most of all for making that connection human and personal, as it should be—as no search engine could ever make it.

Is good fiction based on truth? Is it all a lie? Brain Pickings compiled a list of author quotes on Truth vs. Fiction.

Want to be an iconic author? Try donning a peculiar accessory. It seems to have helped these guys. The bad news: a pipe, an eye patch, and a pair of puppies have already been claimed.

It looks like 2012 is going to be a big year for cult books. The U.K.’s Stylist has predicted which books of 2012 will acquire a cult-like following.

Like many other authors before him, Jonathan Franzen has denounced the e-book, for it’s seeming lack of permanence:

Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.

Ewan Morrison argues in the Guardian that the past few months’ self-epublishing frenzy is the beginning of a bubble. “All of this gives me an alarming sense of deja vu,” he wrote. “There’s another name for what happens when people start to make money out of speculation and hype: it’s called a bubble.”