This Year's Bad-Sex Winners

Jane Austen gets clobbered by Mark Twain, Charlotte Bronte

(NEWSER) - Just because you're in the club, doesn't mean you like all of its members. To wit, Examiner.com lists 50 famous authors that other famous authors really don't like...in their own, well-penned words:

1. Mark Twain on Jane Austen: "Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin bone."
2. Vladimir Nabakov on Ernest Hemingway: "I read him for the first time in the early '40s, something about bells, balls, and bulls, and loathed it."

Why the 'Bad Sex in Fiction Award' is a prudish disgrace

(NEWSER) - Every year the Literary Review of Britain hands out its Bad Sex in Fiction Award, and every year it draws loads of press and snarky giggles at the expense of big-name nominees (who have included Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and, this year, Jonathan Franzen). Well, Laura Miller of Salon is sick of it. “The Bad Sex Award poses as a knowing blow against literary pretension,” she writes, “while embodying the most retrograde prudery.” The award is essentially shaming writers into avoiding sex altogether. More»

'Autographed' first editions brought big bucks in eBay fraud

(NEWSER) - A man who made more than $300,000 by selling "autographed" first editions of books that actually contained forged signatures pleaded guilty to fraud in a Philadelphia court today. Forrest Smith's offerings on eBay included books by Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Anne Rice, Tom Wolfe, and Tom Clancy, the Los Angeles Times reports. The forgeries were excellent—Smith produced them using rubber stamps he had made from the authors' signatures on other items, the Philadelphia Inquirer adds. More»

(NEWSER) - Let’s face it, sex isn’t always great. Beth Mann at Salon breaks down the “seemed like a good idea at the time” list of most overrated erotic acts:

• Sex on the beach: “In real life the beach is sandy, the temperature unpredictable, the mosquitoes, the jellyfish, the police…”
• Porn-style sex: “It’s more of an extreme sport than a sexual act.”

Nerve chooses 50 classics that still turn us on

(NEWSER) - From "Love Shack" to "Sexual Healing," sex and music videos have always gone hand in hand. Nerve lists its picks for the 50 sexiest videos of all time:

1. "Addicted to Love," Robert Palmer: The stone-faced models shimmying behind Palmer exude a cool '80s sexuality.

2. "Centerfold," J Geils Band: Cheesy? Yes. Cute "schoolgirls" with Farrah Fawcett hair? Absolutely.