Hi all, this is my first post so I'll introduce myself.  I'm Catherine Wallach, and I'm a QPB contributing editor.  Like Justin, I'm a pop-culture junkie, but I also love to just throw a question out there and see what other people think, like Dana.   

 I just finished a book last night that got me thinking about fairy tales, especially fractured ones, as used in mainstream literature.  It's called The Book of Lost Things by John Connelly, and it will be coming out in November.  In it, a young boy whose mother has died and whose father has remarried and had a baby with his new wife feels ignored and jealous, and finds himself lured into another world by the voice of his dead mother.  In it, he finds a Woodsman, a knight errant, talking wolves, and a Crooked Man who wants something from him, and it ain't good.

It reminded me a lot of Labyrinth, Donnie Darko, The Neverending Story ... and some books too, don't worry.  The quest story is of course one of the oldest forms of storytelling, but using it as a post-Freudian metaphor for one's subconsious desires finding a way into our conscious reality is a relatively new twist. 

I'm always getting too academic and up in my own head, so if anybody can tell me why we still write these books, as entertaining as they are, even though there are SO many of them, I'd be interested to hear your take!