We already knew that Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn's new book would contain crazy stories about Anna Wintour, but he's also going after Isaac Mizrahi, Martha Stewart's daughter, Bravo, some of the Project Runway contestants, and even his own mother!
England is merrier than usual today, as ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair's memoir finally hits bookstores! So, is he sorry about Iraq? Did he ever "like-like" the Queen? Many questions remain. Blair makes one thing clear, though: He loved getting drunk.
Meghan McCain's book about her father's 2008 presidential campaign, Dirty Sexy Politics, comes out today. Have you finished it yet? If not, here's a primer based on her Good Morning America appearance today: She has mixed feelings about Sarah Palin!
Oxford University Press is considering discontinuing the print version of the Oxford English Dictionary. What's killing the print dictionary? The same thing that killed your attention span, and your manners, and your marriage: The internet.
Freedom, the most groundbreaking book about white people since Jonathan Franzen's last book, isn't released until August 31. But Amazon.com reportedly put the whole thing online yesterday by accident. Anybody grab a copy? It's only newsworthy three more days. [Updated]
Billionaire Clinton pal Ron Burkle is trying to get his model-caressing paws on Barnes and Noble, the bookstore where you love to sit right on the carpet and read, which is gross. Anyhow. B&N says Burkle will "destroy"(!) it.
Author Jodi Picoult's raging about the New York Times ignoring her hokey movie-bait books continues. Why should the Times highlight her commercial fiction? "Think about Charles Dickens. Think about Shakespeare. They were popular authors. They were writing for the masses."
In your nubilous Tuesday media column: the WaPoCo's nervous about Kaplan, Seth Godin to reap more revenue from his followers, AARP Magazine is the king of all magazines, and a newspaper is bringing back a formerly scrapped section. Unheard of!
Socialite and failed reality TV star Tinsley Mortimer is working on the great American novel, to be published by Simon & Schuster. Behold, the death of high society: Manhattan's princess is taking career cues from Nicole Richie. [P6]
Breaking news from Martha's Vineyard: Barack Obama went to a bookstore! And he bought novelist Jonathan Franzen's hotly anticipated greatest masterpiece ever, Freedom. It's not even in stores until August 31! He really does have magical time-defying powers. [Image: AP]
Here's the cover of Me, Ricky Martin's upcoming memoir. In it he talks about Menudo, his solo career, "relationship with his fans," and probably that whole coming out thing. Can we make it cool to love Ricky Martin again?
It's a bit of a joke that straight guys are into "hot girl-on-girl action," but what's new is the burgeoning industry of "M/M romances," erotic novels about gay men written by and for straight women. What's that about?
Stieg Larsson is dead and Harry Potter's retired, so the book publishing industry has only one thing left up its sleeve: The Secret. Oh, wait, that was already published several years ago. Okay: a sequel to The Secret. More secret!
Alexandra Lebenthal, CEO of financial firm Lebenthal & Co., just published her first novel, The Recessionistas, about Wall Street elites coping with the great economic downturn. Let's meet John Cutter, the sort of hedge fund jerk we love to hate.
Deal alert: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking is currently $203.13 off on Amazon! Which means it's only $421.87. A $625, six-volume, 2,200-page cookbook? This is the price of molecular gastronomy.
Google, because it can, calculated the number of books in the world, and came up with a number: 129,864,880. If you read one a day, you could finish in 356,000 years. So, you know, better get started.
Barnes & Noble is putting itself up for sale! Remember when everyone thought B&N would become the Wal-Mart of book selling, an indomitable corporate force controlling the literary world? Boy how wrong that was, huh?
Daniel Reimold is a journalism professor who's spent the last several years talkin' sex talk to sex-talkin' young coeds who write sex columns in college newspapers. Daniel hates how sex column coverage is "an inch deep," that's what she said.