Swimmer girlfriend stealer Michael Phelps inked a book deal with Simon & Schuster's Free Press to write about his Olympics experience. It will have eight chapters.
During all that hoopla in the late 90s about our then-prez and his cigar-loving intern, did you ever stop and think, "Yes, that makes sense, Monica looked just like Bill's grandma?" Well, too bad you never tried to copyright your thought hombre, because someone just went ahead and made a biography on the bigger Clinton, and it focuses on some the more Freudian (read: salient) details of Bill's personal life. No wonder, the book was written by John Hopkin's (assistant) professor and psychologist John D. Gartner, who apparently delves into the Alpha-males brain for a living. Among the myriad of claims that In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography makes (all without support of the Clintons, since Gartner was never able to reach them for comment), there exists some of these gems:
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By last week, David Carr's book The Night of the Gun had made it to his own newspaper's "extended best-seller list." All it took? A mediocre 3,342 copies sold.
And now, an update: He's moved another 3,000 copies, for a grand total of about 6,000 units for the week ending Aug. 17.
This, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about two-thirds of all book sales, so let's say Carr's actual tally is closer to about 9,000. Last week, it stood at No. 82 on Amazon's sales rank; today, it's at No. 134.
So, this is interesting. Yesterday, Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici said Times reporter David Carr's memoir The Night of the Gun hit No. 21 on the Times' own best-seller list for hardcover non-fiction list, "right after Freakonomics and just ahead of Southern Storm." Sound impressive? Maybe not. One source who looks these sort of things up on Nielsen BookScan reports Carr's book has moved only 3,342 copies since it went on sale Aug. 5. Yesterday, Carr's book was down to No. 71 on Amazon.com's best-seller list; today it's slipped again, to No. 82.
Remember when you were five and one of the lessons your parents instilled in you was "Crime doesn't pay"? Yeah, scratch that. Because New York Times media reporter David Carr found out that it does. Big time. The former women abuser, child neglecter, and drug user has seen his memoir The Night of the Gun climb aboard his his own paper's best-seller list.
Update: Or not.
The British media is obsessed with Lorna Page, the 93-year-old first-time novelist who wrote the mystery book, A Dangerous Weakness, to earn enough cash to get her friends out of their nursing homes and moving into her house. The BBC has an adorable video of Page reading an excerpt from her book. She's like J.K Rowling meets Helen Mirren, with Joan Didion's glasses.
'A book of poems featured prominently in AMC's widely lauded "Mad Men" sent viewers scrambling to find copies of Frank O'Hara's "Meditations in an Emergency" after the second-season premiere July 27. Google reports the book of verse shot to No. 1 on its "Hot Trends" list for that day and is out of stock on Amazon.com. O'Hara rose to prominence during the New American Poetry era alongside Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Denise Levertov and Gary Snyder. The book was first published in 1957.' [LAT] (You can also read it here.) Of course, those who saw the Sex and the City movie and were unable to find the book featured prominently in that bit of screendom — because Love Letters of Great Men didn't exist — may now do so.
Five days, people, and the long-awaited, understandably mocked Lynne Spears memoir, Through the Storm, will be upon us.
The cover photo finds Spears staring pensively out of a window, thinking on some unknown turbulence, surely considering how her daughters’ money will help her carry on. And the tome’s content is just as ridiculous.
After being a rock uber-god for years, how much more money do you need? For Steven Tyler, that answer rings in at about $2 million, which is what he's getting for optioning his memoirs to HarperCollins. That should keep the big-lipped singer happy for awhile unless, wuh-oh, he takes a look at how much Keith Richards got for his story, just last year. Hint: It's a lot more.
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It's hard to ironically speak for your generation. Or so says Christian Lander, founder of the popular website-cum-book Stuff White People Like, which is not a primer from the National Alliance's Shaun Walker.
In an interview with a New Republic intern (which is definitely something white people like to do), Lander comes off as a pretty grumpy for a guy who just managed to turn his mildly-satirical website into a feature book in under a year:
The concept of anonymous charities is completely lost on this generation. It's like a tree-falls-in-the-forest thing: If a white person does something positive and doesn't tell you about it, does it happen?
Good question, Christian. Keep us updated if you find out.
Wall Street Journal reporter Greg Zuckerman secured a $250,000 advance from Doubleday for an upcoming book. The book will be about hedge fund manger John Paulson, who turned the mortgage meltdown into a personal profit. Of $3 billion. [NYP]
Not only does New York Times business beater David Carr get the huge publicity of an excerpt in The New York Times Magazine, he also gets a review in the Times' Books section. This is one of the perks of being a reformed crackhead and semi-reformed alcoholic who turned a lifetime of beating women and ignoring his children into a cushy gig at the nation's leading newspaper. So what does his own newspaper think? For starters, that Carr is an "excellent" media columnist. And, in the nearly 1,000 words he spends on his audit, reviewer Pete Hamill — sober alcoholic, author of A Drinking Life, and one-time David Remnick critic — had exactly one negative thing to say about the book. CONTINUED »
"The US media wants to hold me to standards it supposedly holds itself to. But I’m not a journalist, I don't claim to be one, I'm not going to follow anyone else's rules because they tell me I should. The only standards imposed on the creation of [my] books are the ones I want there to be. What means something is if my book is read in 50 years. That's the only goal. If I have to take some big shots in the process of trying to make that happen, then I'm prepared to take those big shots." — James Frey, victim
We have not read David Carr's drug memoir in its entirety, partly because we were off gallivanting around Europe for the past two weeks, but mostly because there is only so much we can read about Carr abusing women and endangering children, especially when we're reading not out of leisure, but out of obligation for this website. How nice, then, for the countless reviews, pull quotes, and other documentation about the Times reporter's insta-meme book to bring us up to speed. For instance, there is today's New York book review/Carr profile from Jennifer Senior. And she didn't just save us a lot of time, energy, and paper cuts by devoting 4,200 words to Carr. Right there, in the middle of her copy, is the most eloquent explanation of Carr, and his motivation behind The Night of the Gun, for you to see. CONTINUED »
A movie industry publicist plays a few roles. It is her (and these people are often shes) job to coordinate those obnoxious three-minute celebrity interviews that even blogs can partake in; there, it's her duty to make sure things like this don't happen.
It's also her job to coordinate step-and-repeats and the usual red carpet drama at movie premieres, selecting which media outlets get how much time with her client; inevitably, tabloid TV shows and anybody else with a video camera get the most time, while reporters with a handheld tape recorder will be lucky to stand next to somebody who gets to ask questions.
But the biggest part of a publicist's job? Making sure her asshole entitled client has bottle service reservations at a handful of clubs (because his tastes can change on whim) for the movie premiere's after-after party, and that the right food from a restaurant that hasn't opened yet, and doesn't offer take out, is served hot on her client's private plane. CONTINUED »
If Christopher Ciccone can get bookstores to find shelf space for his Madonna haterade, surely there's room for a real-life tale of vindictive backstabbing. Though that might not be the most accurate way to describe In His Sights, the new book from Kate Brennan (a pseudonym), who writes openly about what she continues to experience at the hands of her lunatic ex-boyfriend Paul.
To give you an idea of what the author faced, she's had to move 16 times in 16 months, because sometimes she'd come home from work — from jobs where she applied under a fake name — to "a teaspoon from a kitchen drawer lies on the middle of my bed," evidence that Paul, or one of his operatives, had been in her home.
Though a horrific way to go through life, Brennan's victimization could make for a great read. Even the Times thought so, which is why they gave it a write up today. But with Brennan releasing her memoir under a fake name and stuffed with outlandish and often questionable anecdotes in the middle of a publishing climate that tends to raise red flags about those sort of things, the Times couldn't just take her word that all this was true!
Indeed, made a victim once already, Brennan now has to defend her account. CONTINUED »
"This is what makes The Night of the Gun so important. After years of abuse, the memoir has found its white knight, galloping in to show how a personal story can be engrossing, shocking and true. Mr. Carr’s book—which has been the talk of the publishing world since its release date was bumped from September to August and a gripping excerpt was printed in The New York Times Magazine two weekends ago—practically issues a challenge to those current reigning kings—David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Ishmael Beah—of the memoir genre: You get a video camera and tape recorder, and retrace the steps of your life. Will your story sound the same?" [NYO]
I wonder if Lil’ Kim knows that after Simon & Schuster gave her a $40,000 advance to write an novel in 2003, they turned around in 2005 and gave Foxy Brown, of all people, $75,000 for a memoir called Broken Silence, which I’m going to take a wild guess was meant to be about her sudden hearing loss.
While the FCC worries itself over product placement on television programs, who is worrying itself over the product placement in literature? Sorry: "literature." A quick look at the latest crop of chick lit finds itself, much like Sex and the City's title track, obsessed with designer labels. Brand names pop up all over the place, in Lauren Weisberger’s Chasing Harry Winston, Kristen Kemp’s Breakfast at Bloomingdale’s, Bringing Home the Birkin, and Sunday at Tiffany’s. This is sad because while at one time you could already guess the plotlines of these books — girl meets dreamy guy, gabs about dreamy guy with her girl friends, sleeps with dreamy guy, discusses pros and cons of being with dreamy guy — you now already know which fashion labels their authors are whoring themselves out to. [NYT]
Editorial Director
