http://slyoyster.com

Not sure how Book Swim is going to replace the library, but then again, I never underestimate people’s penchant for not wanting to leave their house, or rather, expending the least amount of effort to get what they want.

Here’s how it works: Readers order books online and receive them through the mail. They can choose among plans that would allow them to receive from three to 11 books at a time. These books can be kept for as long as the reader likes with no late fees.

When finished with at least two books, the reader sends them back to BookSwim in a pre-paid return bag that comes with every shipment.

Readers who fall in love with their books have the option to buy them. (About a third of the books shipped out are brand new – the others are “pre-read.”)

There are four different membership levels, ranging from $19.98 per month for their “light reader” three-at-a-time plan to $39.94 per month for the “voracious reader” 11-at-a-time plan.

Again though, there is something about the library that lends itself to discovery, something about flipping through books, pulling them off the shelves, smelling their binding and making that connection with a book you’ve never heard of.  I do agree that libraries should be better about keeping high demand books in stock and there’s something to be said about not having to wait four months just to read something.

File this under “disgusting.”

Inexplicably popular (female) author Curtis Sittenfeld’s newest tome fictionally explores the life of First Lady Laura Bush, and doesn’t skimp on the erotic particulars.

American Wife, due in September, is loosely based on Mrs. Bush’s existence, including a fatal car accident at age sixteen (she didn’t die, obviously) and marrying an idiotic man-child who later became President of the United States.

Radar Magazine has the skinny on a few of the more stomach-churning scenes of eroticism, made disgusting by replacing the main characters with George and Laura Bush.? What’s that?? You can’t wait to read about George Bush’s cock?? Well, here you go:

But I felt a great devotion to Charlie when I first got a look at his, the ruddy-hued, upward-pointing shaft, its swollen veins and cap-like tip. All of it was so completely of him, and I felt how there was no part of his body I wouldn’t want to touch, no way I wouldn’t allow him to touch me.

And this is the scene where Bush chomps on Laura’s cooter:

His cheeks between my thighs, his bobbing head, and his earnest assiduous lapping?very quickly, it was too much to bear, and I gasped and cried out. It was like tremors, and I felt my thighs clenching around his head, and when he came up a few seconds later and kissed my forehead, I said, ‘I hope I didn’t suffocate you,’ and he said, ‘I can’t think of a better way to go.’

God that’s disgusting.? Of course, this is fiction, people, so it’s not really Laura’s va-jayjay or George’s wiener.? But still: it’s no big secret.? Clearly this monkey passion stems from the douchebag we twice elected.

I guess the title says it all.? Pretty much everyone everywhere was reading Harry Potter 7, in terms of cultural events this was probably the biggest event of the year.

And it was also the only book on the NY Times list of 100 notable books that I managed to read.? Yes, I know, I’m pathetic.

Well we know he’s gay, the entire known universe knows it to.? Does anyone else begin to think that this is just another publicity stunt?? I’m not sure why but now that book number seven has come and gone, it feels like we keep getting more Harry Potter “news” than ever before.? J.K. Rowling is really trying to keep this in the spotlight, yeah?? Or the media just has nothing else to write about.? Either way, the kid actors react to the news.

The American badboy literary icon, founder of the Village Voice and so much more passed away.? Read the obituary here.? Not like we didn’t see this one coming, but it’s a sad day for literary lovers everywhere.? Mailer was a giant, his shadow looms large.

His kidneys failed in the early morning, less than a month after he underwent surgery to remove scar tissue from his lungs, his family said.

Struggling to find his role at the fledgling paper, Mailer began his column four months later. “I will become an habitual assassin-and-lover columnist who will have something superficial or vicious or inaccurate to say about many of the things under the sun, and who knows but what some of the night,” he closed his first effort.

He described his time as an assassin-and-lover columnist for the Voice as being filled with marijuana, sexual conquests, and the bohemian counter-culture in Greenwich Village. “Drawing upon hash, lush, Harlem, Spanish wife, Marxist culture, three novels, victory, disaster, and draw, the General looked over his terrain and found it a fair one, the Village a seed-ground for the opinions of America, a crossroads between the small town and the mass media,” he later reflected in the introduction of his Village Voice columns in Advertisements for Myself. Four months later, however, he quit the paper??a move he attributed to typographical errors in his column.

Yup, that pretty much says it all.? Personally, I’ve only read one book by the man and it just happens to be one of my favorite books.? If you have a few days pick up American Dream.? That book will knock your socks off. ? Guess nows as good a time as any to dust of that unused copy of Naked and the Dead.?