I do find it odd that authors think that they have to be nice to other authors. Yes, we are all in the same business and we are trying to make a living. In fact, we very well could run into each other. The problem is that when we give glowing blurbs to terrible books or refrain from saying what we DON'T like about a book (or even failing to give the title of the book that we find so terrible), we are losing our respectability and our ability to be honest with ourselves.

I think the 20s authors were going too far when they made it a point of pride in calling out their friends and giving them bad reviews as a source of pride, but I think that for an author to be taken seriously as someone who blurbs or recommends books that author must also be willing to take the piss out of the occasional book. For example, no one is going to care if you or I hate The Historian (I despise that boring book and I barely made it to the requisite 50 pages before putting it aside - especially after I realized that it was pushed so hard because it was The Da Vinci Code meets Twilight) but being on record as hating that book means that people take us more seriously if we push the works of Catherynne Valente for example (and I usually literally do that since I like to shove her books in people's hands as soon as I am done with them and go "HERE! Read this!! Now!"

Hopefully she's already looked at this comment thread and doesn't see that. Not that I mind but it is a little embarrassing.