I've never been a big fan of most of Amazon's so-called features. I've entered some 500+ of my books, 300+ CDs, and a few dozen DVDs into the My Collection feature, with ratings, and still their "My Recommendations" feature generally provides incredibly unhelpful suggestions.

One might think their new "Recommend another book in addition to or instead of this book feature," which allows customers to suggest books to each other, would represent both an awareness of the problem and its brilliant solution.

Think again.

I've been following the development of this so-called feature via the Bookslut blog, but for those of you who haven't, let's sum up:

1. Anyone can post a recommendation of another book to "buy instead", even the author of the other book being recommended.
2. There's a delay in the posting of such recommendations, but no apparent editorial review or automated checking for scamming of the system.
3. Thus, enterprising authors such as this one shoot to the top of the Amazon bestseller list by riding on the coattails of other--established--bestseller books.

There have always been problems with Amazon's existing features anyway: many low-selling books would be scammed with multiple anonymous ("A reader") reviews that were actually foils for the author, and some enterprising (read desperate)authors would even exploit the review feature to recommend their books over other, completely unrelated books.

This, however, takes the whole thing to a new level. When it works, the system does work -- e.g. 2 helpful readers suggest buying Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens in addition to the hardcover edition of Gaiman's American Gods. When it doesn't work, however, it's an abject failure.

For example, 1 reader recommends this completely unrelated CD instead of the paperback edition of House Of Leaves. Another recommends this book, which is also recommended by 3 "people" instead of A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. There, 5 "people" also recommend Birdseed Cookies instead.

In this New York Times article, Birdseed Cookies author Janis Jaquith confesses: Ms. Jaquith, a 49-year-old commentator on a public radio station in Roanoke, Va., said she was initially put off by the idea of recommending one book over another. "I thought, `That is really mean-spirited,' " she said.

But then she concluded that glomming onto another book was actually a kind of compliment to its commercial success. She recommended her book instead of those by the public radio commentators David Sedaris and Garrison Keillor, and she urged her family and friends to do the same with other books. I must say, this "conclusion" is horse-pucky, tripe, bat guano, and to put it bluntly, overwheening bullshit.

Were it a gentle reader unacquainted with and unmotivated by Ms. Jaquith, that might arguably be a compliment. Were it even someone acting at the behest of Ms. Jaquith, but recommending "in addition" to the book rather than "instead", that might arguably pass for a compliment in some twisted sense.

But in no way can I find it complimentary to suggest one's own novel instead of another's in a place of public commerce. This is akin to hiring a crier to stand in the local bookstore announcing "This book _____ is better than anything by Tom Clancy! Buy this book!" It's simply unethical and unsportsmanlike, especially when Amazon already provides ample designated space on the page for the publisher and author to add comments, synopses, book jacket quotes, or whatever.

Amazon seems to be in no hurry to fix the problem, but I don't see it as even half their fault, anyway. The problem much larger than a broken, unpoliced new feature lies in writers apparently unable to police their own behavior.

Certainly the publishing world is an exceedingly difficult and disheartening milieu in which to work, and clever self-promotion is a powerful tool in achieving literary recognition. There are, however, lines that should not be crossed, and this is one of them.

If it were my book, I wouldn't find it complimentary in the least.

Courtesy of the slumberland.org blog, this eBay auction features a truly entertaining item description. Be sure you read the whole thing, even the fine print.

Could this herald a new genre of "eBay literature"? In any event, it's certainly amusing.

What ever happened to comic strips? Strips, not books -- that's a whole other issue. A read through the Austin American-Statesman's Sunday comics pages this weekend netted me one or two chuckles and maybe one brief instance of thought provocation.

I realize now why I stopped reading the comics pages regularly years ago. Old standards and new strips alike are almost uniformly bad these days.

Where does a guy have to go to find a decent comic strip these days? Where is the mind-altering brilliance of a Little Nemo In Slumberland? Where the slightest hint of truly clever humor? Where any noticeable frame of reference to the world and times we are actually living in?

They're out there, of course. The answer is that, with rare exception, they're not in the pages of your daily newspaper. They're in the back pages of weekly "alternative" papers, and on websites like Salon.com that regularly run alternative comics. And an increasing number of them are either created or archived online, where you, gentle readers, can experience them.

In the coming days, I'll be profiling some of my favorite "strips for the thinking person", including: Peter Blegvad's Leviathan, Aaron McGruder's Boondocks, Tony Millionaire's Maakies, Lynda Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek, Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World, and more.

My focus will be on strips that are currently either syndicated in print on a weekly or daily basis, or updated that frequently online. There will however, be a few exceptions (e.g. Leviathan, which ceased publication in 1999). Meanwhile, I invite you to begin experiencing some of the best in modern comic strips from those that have websites linked above.