Novelist Ann Patchett opened Parnassus, an independent bookstore--and the only bookstore--in Nashville last year. On The Colbert Report, she challenges him to compare a book-signing party at her store to one in an Amazon warehouse. Colbert tells her, "Oooh, independent bookstore! I should buy one on Amazon."

After Colbert asked the audience to order her book via Amazon to bump up its sales, Patchett told them that everyone who orders her book, State of Wonder, online through her bookstore's website will receive a signed copy.

Literature and food feed the mind and the body. Now you can enjoy the literary and culinary in one place.

In January, a new blog, Paper and Salt, debuted featuring the recipes that appear in books and in author's letters and diaries, along with tidbits about the author. Talk about a literary feast! The blogger, Nicole (no last name), writes,

Book reviews are perfect for buzzword bingo. Words like compelling, lapidary, page-turner and elegiac appear all-too frequently in book reviews.

Ron Charles, fiction editor and book critic for the Washington Post, has entertained book lovers everywhere with several funny videos about books. In his latest, Sh*t Book Reviewers Say, he mocks such book review fodder.

These Scrabble ads by Ogilvy & Mather's office in Costa Rica show a whimsical use of the board game's letter tiles. The quotes are from NASA, Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles. These ads could make for a new twist on the game for Scrabble devotees: replace a word in a famous quote using the letters in your tile rack.

Scrabble was invented during the Great Depression. You can read about its history here.