Authors ranked by their novelty candle scents

7. Jane Austen -- "my goodness,  Kitty, do you ever throw any of your flowers out from gentlemen?" "I always save one in case I need it for my scrapbook." (Coughing)

6. Mark Twain -- I deputized the neighbor kids to make this, not knowing they were going to put in Ol' Widder Thomas' vanilla. P-U!!!

5. Edgar Allen Poe -- and as he stared into the candle flame and the curl of smoke, a terror inchoate grew within him so that he might shout, "What Hath God Put Into This Thing?"

4. Emily Dickinson --

Good night! which put the candle out?
A smelly zephyr, not a doubt.
Ah! friend, you little knew
How long at that cassis wick
Tennesseans labored diligent;
Extinguished, now, for you!

3. Charles Dickens -- Sold by a merchant inevitably named Jeremiah Dripp who doesn't approve of your purchase and will keep telling you that every 100 words or so.
2. Leo Tolstoy -- also available in the "Things Levin Never Knew Existed, And Other Things He And Kitty Can't Live Without" catalog.
1. Oscar Wilde -- cedarwood, basil and bon mots. You can't keep up with its witticisms so don't even try.

(Available at Paddywax.com or at Barnes & Noble)

Target audience?

I spotted this shirt out in the wild today. It was on the back of a boy, maybe 14, leaving a screening of "The Dictator." As you were.

Re. editing HUCK FINN

And while we're at it, let's just leave all that uncomfortable racism business in the past. Racism is over! It's totally over, all we have to do is say it is. It's 2011, it's just find and replace, people! Find and replace.

Tom Sawyer would be proud

The first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography is slugging it out for the top spot on Amazon's preorders list with two kids' series juggernauts, Rick Riordan's THE LOST HERO (he wrote the PERCY JACKSON books that were made into a movie in February) and the latest DIARY OF A WIMPY KID. I think a fake funeral is in order.

Do you write in your books?

Mark Twain did! A western Connecticut town has unearthed a load of his books in which Twain, who died 100 years ago this month, energetically underlined and scribbled comments that were sometimes polite but mostly snarky.

I actually don't write in my books that much, even the ones that are important to me. I got out of the habit during college (except for books in Spanish, in which I left in translations of obscure words) and now I wish I had because I wonder what I was looking at the last time I read them. On the other hand, I have books I wrote in in high school that I can barely read for the embarrassment of my own comments. My copy of THE GREAT GATSBY is like this -- I think I may just have to buy another one.

I will often dog-ear lower corners of books I review as shorthand for "Something about this page/passage is worthy of mention, I'll get back to this." I know it's bad for the books, but I give away most of them so I'm not overly concerned with keeping them new-looking. (Naturally, I won't do either of these things in books I've borrowed -- in case you are contemplating a recall.)