THE BULWER-LYTTON FICTION CONTEST
(from Jude at Borderlands books in SF)
The winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for 2006 have been announced! In case you're not familliar with this august contest, (whose results are announced in July) their website explains it succinctly: "An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is the essence of simplicity: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels." This year's winner was submitted by Jim Guigli of Carmichael, CA: "Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean." For more startlingly bad opening lines, visit

http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2006.htm.

And talking of books, reports have come out of Crawford, Texas, that our President was seen looking at a copy of The Stranger by Albert Camus. We can only assume that, from the title, he assumed it was a western.

The secret word is Literacy