gawker-book-club

Paris Hilton Is Basically a Racist Porn Star, Says New Book

Richard Lawson · 01/23/09 01:36PM

New book Six Degrees of Paris Hilton profiles Darnell Riley, a shady criminal and pseudo-celebrity hanger-on who knows many wicked Hollywood-sleaze secrets. The tome spins many damning stories about the hood-lidded socialite's sordid existence.

Book Cashing in On Ashley Dupre's 'Fame' Arrives

Sheila · 11/24/08 05:53PM

How convenient that former $2,000 an hour girl Natalie McLennan's escorting memoir is being released tomorrow, hot on the heels of Spitzer escort Ashley Dupre's tearful Dianne Sawyer interview! Sometimes, it's just synergy, sometimes it's just luck. Kind of like the time a website sprung up "accusing" her of ratting out her former friend/call girl comrade Ashley Dupre to law enforcement officials, which resulted in a nice Page Six item. (The guest column a few days later was gravy.) For someone who's in a line of work that makes publicity dangerous, McLennan has always known how to work the press; she made the cover of New York magazine in 2005. Now that her book is finally out pretty much the only thing anyone cares about is the Ashley Dupre stuff. So, what does it say? Well. Frankly, it's mostly pornographic! So if you're offended by hottt XXX lesbian action, please do not click here.

Name-Checking Tatiana Boncompagni's Socialite Novel

Sheila · 09/17/08 10:20AM

Tatiana Boncompagni is a total socialite. How do we know? Because she's related to an Italian princess, her husband is the Hoover vacuum-cleaner heir, she's friends with uber-socialites Tinsley Mortimer and Fabiola Beracasa, and because she just wrote a socialite novel and works at a magazine. (Magazine jobs were lost ago lost to the rich. As such, Boncompagni pens a column for Conde Nast's Cookie, the magazine about children.) The Daily Intel interviewed her recently. Example: does she give money to panhandlers? "Double strollers don't push themselves. So no, not usually." You're probably excited about the book, Gilding Lily. So we excerpted it by doing a search for the required keywords: Jimmy Choo, Louboutin, Bergdorf and Birkin—all the ingredients for a chick-lit society tome!

The Much-Vaunted LOLcat Blog-to-Book

Sheila · 09/16/08 02:28PM

A couple months ago, we LOL'd at the book proposal for the upcoming LOLcats book, I Can Has Cheezburger? Then, in a blog-to-book roundup, we declared "do not want" on the LOLcat book, explaining, "The LOLcats experience is fleeting; the site stuffed with content, and copycat sites abound." We were right about some of these blog-to-books: the rushed-to-print Stuff White People Like, for instance, sucked and did not merit a review. But! We have the LOLcats books in our hands right now, and we'd like to overturn our previous verdict of DO NOT WANT.The new book is little and cute and we want! It may not be necessary for the Internet savvy among us (like everyone reading), but it makes a cute gift for someone like your grandma who doesn't understand the Internet but probably would understand funny captioned cat-photos. In the proposal, the authors assured they wouldn't be "just slapping some lolcats on a page and calling it a book." But that's exactly what they ended up doing! It doesn't matter, though. Because today we LOL'd, and we really needed to. And that is the power of the LOLcats. Update: On the book's Amazon.com page, we noticed something very weird:

Touring New York's Restaurants With Mr. Zagat Himself

Sheila · 07/24/08 11:36AM

In his just-released book, The Man Who Ate the World, restaurant critic Jay Rayner explores the oft-overblown luxury dining of the world. In a scene from New York, the man behind the Zagat Survey—Mr. Tim Zagat himself—takes him on a whirlwind tour. It's fun to watch brash American Zagat embarrass Rayner, a Brit with a sense of propriety. Who do they run into at Meatpacking District monstrosity Buddakan other than America's favorite "One Tough Cop," private investigator Bo Dietl—who tells them that he came for the food, but stayed for the "pussy":

Here's the Part of James Frey's New Novel That's Based on Perez Hilton

Sheila · 05/05/08 01:06PM

James Frey's upcoming novel, Bright Shiny Morning, features interwoven narratives from the city of Los Angeles. One of his characters, a gay Cuban internet-based gossip, is based on—you guessed it, Perez Hilton! Aww. (Although, Frey does write that "between six and eight million people a day come to his website," which seems a little high.) Read the excerpt for trajectory of a young Perez Hilton.

"If You Don't Know Any Wealthy People, However, Don't Despair. They're Easy To Meet."

Joshua Stein · 12/11/07 03:19PM

It was April of 1983, and Mary Kirby was an azure-eyed up-and-coming author. She was single, but on purpose, and men would trail her everywhere. She was so good at meeting men that she wrote a book about it! She called it "Mary Kirby's Guide to Meeting Men." Twenty-five years later, the text is still amazingly instructive. Today's homily comes from "Chapter Seven: Zeroing In On Particular Men" Particular in this instance means rich and Christian.

Today In Drizzt Do'Urden: "I Loved You And Lost You Because I Was A Fool"

Emily Gould · 11/07/07 05:45PM

Dungeons and Dragons-themed fantasy tome 'The Orc King' is a New York Times bestseller, which means some people at some stores bought many copies. Why'd they do that? Maybe it's because orcs fall in love just like Patrick Moberg and the rest of us. In today's book club selection, orc king Drizzt Do'Urden's lady, the human fighter from the Icewind Dale Catti-Brie, reconciles with her once-paramour, the barbarian Wulfgar. Cue mood music!

Bill Cosby: It Takes A Village Of Overextended Metaphors

Sheila · 10/19/07 12:10PM

Bill Cosby's new book, "Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors," (written with Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, 243 pages) is a big ball of crazy, kind of like the yearly harangue you get from your grandfather: "Why don't you have a real job yet? Why can't you hang on to a significant other?" Except it's completely directed at black folks! Like W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington before him, Cosby gamely suggests that black people pull themselves up by the bootstraps. From chapters ranging from "What's Going On With Black Men?" to "We All Start Out As Children," Cosby overshares his kooky ideas about the world, pissing and moaning that black Americans need to "tone down the culture" and "get smart about sex." Of course "When we were kids" is used more than once, and, did you know? In those days, kids knew their place (and knew how to act!) To underscore this point, he helpfully puts in quotations any word that seems "hip," "cool," or "new." Let's start with chapter 1, in which Bill Cosby casually enforces racial stereotypes.

James Lipton's Memoir May Be The Worst Thing Ever

Joshua Stein · 10/12/07 09:30AM

James Lipton, host of Bravo's Inside The Actor's Studio, has a book! It's called Inside Inside and we got our copy today. It's 492 pages long and costs $27.95. If the first two pages are any indication, it might be the most gloriously horrendous book ever written. You have to love a man who starts the memoir of his middle-brow career with an epigraph by Chaucer, from 'The Canterbury Tales': "And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche." Nearly as trenchant as Dostoevsky's "Raskolnikov seemed offended." (Crime and Punishment, pg 144.) Or Faulkner's immortal words, "'Such good beer,' she said." (Sanctuary, pg 140.) Except with the added benefit that Chaucer is a) in Middle English and b) in the prologue. Let's face it, Lipton only has time for prologues. He's a busy guy and can barely read. But can he write? You decide.