Cosmo web assistant Leo (Smith '07) has been instructed by her "26 year old Cosmo pro" of a boss to blog for thirty days about the struggle of "one socially awkward girl attempt[ing] to transform into a sexy, social butterfly." Young Leo is like Angela Chase of Cosmo: earnest and endearing and totally non-evil, which is obviously holding her back in the fashion world. (Her roommate puts on her eyeliner for her in the morning 'cause she doesn't know how! Aw!) Increasingly, watching her thirty-day evolution at the hands of people who professionally suggest "how to be a total man-magnet" is like watching a gazelle getting torn apart by hyenas.

• We wondered if race was a social construct and discussed that while reading Bill Cosby's new book. We didn't have to wonder that with James Lipton's.
  

Shalom Auslander, whose memoir Foreskin's Lament is one of the hot contestants of the fall season, confronts the perils of impending fame in this excerpt, in which he is photographed for a magazine. His thoughts on the matter are pretty much note-perfect.