Last night was Megan Hustad's book party for her distillation of success literature, How To Be Useful at the shabby-chic Good World in the Lower East Side. I had two separate friends in publishing who are not with her publisher, Houghton Mifflin, tell me about this party, and (full disclosure) I used to be her publicist. Small world. This makes Megan a sort of publishing nexus, bringing together at the party most of the Basic Books alum circa 2003-2005 who are now spread out all over the industry at Hachette, Penguin, Overlook, McMillan, Norton, Random House and the New Yorker.

Eagle-eye Michael Webb from Houghton spotted Galaxie 500's Dean Wareham with Luna bandmate Britta Phillips in the house. Wareham's Black Postcards: A Rock & Roll Romance was just published by The Penguin Press. Megan's Parents Stan and Karen (right), we're the life of the party and Karen is thrilled to be the "grandmother of a book."

Top Photo: Hustad with former roomie, Julie Doughty from Dutton Editorial.

Some Pics, Penguin Gossip and the seedy past of Good World after the jump.

I found Hari Kunzru, author of My Revolutions hanging in the back garden which used to be a shooting gallery for junkies back in the day. After the sun set, they fired up a small wood burning stove and I chatted about herring and socialism with the Swedish owner.

Overlook Press' David Shoemaker, Christeen(tequilla)Roden with Hustad's agent Mel Flashman show off how spacious the bar was before it became standing room only later in the evening. That's when I heard from an insider that Penguin is going completely electronic, and not everyone is getting a reader (or happy about it). They're also having an innordinate amount of training with 4 hour classes to learn how the edit buttons work on MS Word. Yikes.