So, What Do You Read?

This comes to us from our ol’ buddy Andy Cobb.

The last time James Frey appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show it was to receive a public spanking for passing off his largely fictional tome A Million Little Pieces as a memoir. That was 2006, and Frey has had some time to recover.

He also has a new book to plug, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, an admittedly fictional novel about a re-imagined Jesus Christ living in modern times. Frey seems to have embraced controversy as his ticket back to the best seller list — his version of Christ is a bed-hopping, bisexual troublemaker.

So why is Oprah having the disgraced author back on her show? An unnamed source tells the New York Post:

Oprah apologized to James a couple of years ago, and he appreciated it. So he agreed to go back on her show and talk about everything that’s happened over the last five years.

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In a piece titled, “Paul Ryan and the New Politics of Sadism” in Esquire they draw a fascinating parallel:

In terms of their connection to actual human reality, the difference between the doctrines of Ayn Rand and the doctrines of L. Ron Hubbard is not substantial, and the fervor of their acolytes is almost exactly the same. Picking Paul Ryan to handle your political economy is tantamount to electing Tom Cruise to be pope.

We’ll add one more: In 2000 when Battlefield Earth, a movie based on a L Ron Hubbard novel, came out the reviews were universally bad and by and large hilarious.

Now Atlas Shrugged Part I is registering similar on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s ranking (as of this posting) is 6% on the Tomatometer. Reviews like:
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For most of us ink-stained wretches, throwing a book party in Los Angeles during a torrential downpour would whittle the attendees down to single digits. But when Arianna Huffington and Wendi Murdoch (yes, wife of Rubert) host such an event, everyone grabs an umbrella and braves the rain.

Friday night’s event, hosted at Arianna’s Brentwood home, was held in honor of Kathy Freston‘s newest book, “Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change The World.” Notable guests included Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Moby, Frances Fisher, Lorne Michaels, and Rob Reiner. So naturally, there was plenty of starfuckery going on. This fishie was making polite conversation with an elderly gentleman when he abruptly shoved me out of the way to get to Marla Maples. Remember her? Other 90′s flashbacks in attendance included Elizabeth Berkley, Tracey Ullman, Candice Bergen, and Oliver Stone.

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Former LA Timer, ex-Gawker editor Richard Rushfield has turned his beat into a book: A tuned tome about a ten year old reality show. “American Idol: The Untold Story” is in stores now.

Speaking of untold stories, his book party was at a swanky undisclosed location last night. Guest included Rob Long, Clare Hoffman, Ben Goldhirsh (publisher of GOOD) and Peter Bart. From the Daily Beast, Gabe Doppelt and Kate Aurthur and novelist Andrea Seigel.

And yes, if you were wondering…he did charge his guests for copies of his book. Twenty-seven bucks each.

We won a couple of bets on that one. Now pay up.

James Ellroy has gone all Dominick Dunne on us. Ellroy stars in a new series LA: City of Demons about crime on Investigation Discovery and the second episode finally aired last night.

The show covers some of the tawdry and gory stories of our little city. Plus Ellroy has a computer animated corrupt police dog who chats with him in every episode. We don’t know why. But we’re watching.

For a religion based on a book, you’d think they’d have a little more (ahem) veneration for copy editors when trying to fish (get it?) for ideas.

Respond to the ad here.

Recession? Death of print media? Amazon.com isn’t worried. The e-tailer announced today that the 3G, Wi-Fi Kindle is the website’s bestselling product ever. More people turned on new Kindles for the first time on Christmas day than any other day in the product’s history.

Amazon doesn’t release sales figures, but they did reveal other interesting numbers: On the company’s peak sales day, November 29, more than 13.7 million items were purchased from the site. That breaks down to 158 items per second, a new record for the company. Not surprisingly, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson was the most purchased and most gifted Kindle book on Christmas day. Topselling movies for the holiday season were “Inception”; “The Blind Side”; and “Toy Story 3”

But by far our favorite figure from the release is this:

For the holiday time period alone, Amazon customers bought enough copies of “Eclipse” for Edward Cullen to watch the movie 1,000 times a day for all 109 years of his life.

Just go ahead and ignore the bad grammar. From Craigslist:

Volunteer for T.V. Pilot (Los Angeles)

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Date: 2010-12-20, 3:24PM PST
Reply to: job-vjzsm-2122930112@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

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Volunteers needed for T.V. Pilot

Current book writers that have never been published only need to apply. Non-Union writers only. Fiction, non fiction, short stories, children’s book, sci-fi.
This is to participate in a Pilot episode of a reality show.
There may be an opportunity to be part of the actual show in the end.
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Garrison Keillor writes in the NYT Book Review:

Here is a powerful argument for writers’ burning their papers — you’d like to be remembered for “The Innocents Abroad” and “Life on the Mississippi” and the first two-thirds of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and not for excruciating passages of hero worship of General Grant and his son Fred and accounts of your proximity to the general and your business dealings as the publisher of his memoirs, which only reminds the reader that the general wrote a classic autobiography, and you tried to and could not.

Think twice about donating your papers to an institution of higher learning, Famous Writer: someday they may be used against you.

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