He's definitely mainstream among teens but I would bet that most of the people on this page commenting about YA literature haven't heard of him. Which is part of my other argument that most of the people opining about YA have very little familiarity with what teens are actually reading.

Scott Westerfeld is a very popular dystopian YA writer whom I actually surprised hasn't broken through to mainstream success yet. One of the most popular book series for teens is Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series - basically a teen spy adventure. Darren Shan has some popular horror books. Frank Portman, Ned…

Depends on the bookstore. The one I worked at had Harry Potter categorized as "Young Readers" and Twilight as "Teen." I tend to see YA used interchangeably with Teen.

Interesting - the general assessment around The Hunger Games books is that they have good worldbuilding but the writing isn't very good. So how is someone supposed to know what books are worth of reading and which are worse than reading nothing?

That's nice. I read a lot of The Great Books too. Do you not read anything purely for fun or does everything you read have to be Great?

I'm pretty much in agreement with the people who say that it generally reflects commercial literature as a whole. There are always some categories that are respected more than others and there are some books that make it to the Mainstream Fiction bookstore sections and other that stay in the genre departments. But,…

So, kind of a prequel to Sunset Blvd.?

Good ol' Lester Holt, NBC's perpetual back-up man.

I read The Night of the Gun last year and it was enjoyable even if I didn't believe it all. Still have to watch Page One so I don't know him as screen presence but I enjoyed reading his columns. In fact, I had just finished yesterday's column about Brian Williams when I heard the news. Very strange week for…

I used to be slightly obsessed with the history of CBS news and Bob Simon was one of the few still working who fit into that tradition. It seems so random that, after all he'd done and been through, that it was a random car crash that did it. It reminds me of when David Halberstam died a few years ago.

Kefka destroying the world caused a lot of problems, but it did help Ultros let go of some of his aggression and find his true calling as a receptionist.

But he has kids!

But good luck finding a copy at a decent price.

Or when you find out that your mercenary high school is actually run by someone from another species and you originally knew all your friends when you were in an orphanage but forgot them because of the monsters you apparently implant in your brain. Also, monsters periodically fall from the moon.

Like trying to seduce your clone by wearing skimpy clothes?

There's also "Fighting a t-rex so you can get to the school's make-out spot."

I replayed the entire first half of FFVII with a walkthrough just to try to get the Barrett date.

David Mitchell is most definitely the Mitchell half of Mitchell and Webb (Robert appeared on one episode but it was in H series). He's been a pretty frequent regular on QI since the C series and, I'm pretty sure, Stephen's favorite.

One week until QI premieres on BBC America! I know at least a few people are interested so here's the scoop. There will be three episodes starting at 8pm (40 minutes each with commercial breaks so don't go thinking they will be the XL versions). And according to the BBC America website, the first episodes will be:

I was just thinking last week that Philomena Cunk's Weekly Wipe segments have the feel of a Daily Show field piece.