So we were wrong about two things when we relayed the rumor that James Frey had sold his next book to Harper's Jonathan Burnham yesterday. We were wrong about the amount the book had sold for, which still hasn't been confirmed, but is now rumored to be in excess of one million. Which, actually, makes sense if Harper is assuming that the four million people who bought A Million Little Pieces will all rush out and buy Bright Shiny Morning, too. Don't let that happen, America. We were also wrong about whether the book is a novel or short stories: it's a novel. "I have never written a short story in my life," James told Times book reporter Motoko Rich yesterday when she contacted him about the rumors. "But Mr. Frey published a short story last fall in a catalog for an exhibition by Malerie Marder, a Los Angeles-based artist," Motoko reports. ZING.

Book Deal For Writer Who Fabricated Parts Of Memoir [NYT]

Can print book coverage and literary blogs ever find a way to get along? Book blogger Maud Newton thinks so: "I find it kind of naïve and misguided to be a triumphalist blogger," she told Times book reporter Motoko Rich. "But I also find it kind of silly when people in the print media bash blogs as a general category, because I think the people are doing very, very different things." A good point, and one that's entirely lost on novelist Richard Ford.

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What do Motoko Rich, Janet Maslin and Michiko Kakutani have in common? They're all part of a sinister conspiracy against women in general and woman author Leslie Bennetts in particular. In a letter on the HuffPo, the ten-year vet of the Times takes issue with yesterday's Times article suggesting that maybe women don't want to read books about the whole working mother dilemma. She notes that her own book, The Feminine Mistake, has already moved more copies than several other titles to which it is compared and then likens herself to critically-injured New Jersey governor Jon Corzine. But wait, there's more!

In "Mommy Books: More Buzz Than Buyers," Motoko Rich sets out to prove an intriguing thesis: that the whole issue of whether mothers should work or stay at home with their kids is so fraught, so thorny, that women refuse to buy books about it. The article is illustrated by a photo of author Leslie Bennetts and her family, and indeed, the first four paragraphs focus on one SAHM-blogger's dismissal (sans actual reading, of course) of Bennetts' recently-published book. And then we come to this little bundle of confusing.

Motoko Rich of the Wall Street Journal uncovers the mystery of the glass hotel going up in the Lower East Side. Blogger Lockhart Steele, who'd been speculating for months about plans for the site, wets himself with enthusiasm. The project is a co-production between developers and Surface, the urban-lifestyle magazine. The hotel will feature top-floor suites designed by the hottest decorators and furniture designers. Of course, Surface isn't the first hotel to be named after a magazine.
· magazine | hotel [W]
· magazine | hotel [Standard]
· magazine | hotel [New Yorker]
Magazine Helps Design Hotel To Showcase New Furnishings [Motoko Rich in the Wall Street Journal]
That Hotel Across The Street From Me Update [Lockhart Steele]
A cruise around the New York blogosphere [Felix Salmon]

Salomon Smith Barney, part of Citigroup, is in a dispute with its landlord. The bank, in its efforts to create a respectful work environment, has removed a piece of artwork depicting two female nudes. The landlords, a pair of crotchety 70-somethings, keep putting it back. You'll have seen yesterday's post about Wall Street executives learning to interact politely with civilians. Wall Street, the last redoubt of arrogance and sexism, just isn't the same any more. Motoko Rich reports.
Bare Naked Ladies in Lobby on Wall Street; See Them? [Wall Street Journal]