Madoff Mistress Writes Tell-All

Just when you think you’ve heard the end of Ponzi scheming financial slime bucket Bernie Madoff, another shoe drops.

This time, the dirt is being dealt by Sheryl Weinstein, a woman who not only claims she had a 20 year affair with the Ponzi jailbird, she’s written a book about it. Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me is due out later this month from St. Martin’s Press. From the Macmillan Web site:

Bernie Madoff has struck a deep chord in the American psyche. This well-coiffed, impeccably groomed, affable, yet sinister man has come to symbolize the entire financial sector for the countless Americans whose net worth has plummeted and whose jobs are either lost or in danger due to the continuing recession and tight credit.

Sheryl Weinstein, former CFO of Hadassah, controller of Lincoln Center, and graduate of the Wharton School of Business has seen Madoff up close for more than twenty years, as she reveals in Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie and Me.

“Up close” seems a dangerous euphemism here. I love, for instance, the title CBC News adopted for their piece on the book: “Madoff Screwed Charity Then Slept with CFO, Says Book.” Kinda says it all, doesn’t it? ‘Nuff said.

File This Under “Books You’re Never Going to See Reviewed Here”

Remember Carrie Prejean, the slender 22-year-old blond model who got a boob job, was named Miss California USA, placed first runner-up in this year’s Miss USA pageant, and then was stripped of her title after speaking out against gay marriage at the televised pageant and seeing racy photos of herself ... er, exposed on the Internet? Well, it seems this woman, who for a time was all over conservative talk shows touting her Christian credentials, has now been signed by right-wing Regnery Publishing to write her autobiography (or at least have somebody write it for her). Really? Only 22 years old and she thinks her life is interesting enough to justify people spending dough on her thoughts?

Regnery president and publisher Marji Ross insists, “It’s not a book about gay marriage. It’s not a book about traditional marriage ... She wanted to write a book about freedom of speech and the double standard that seems to exist when someone speaks their mind and doesn’t happen to be politically correct or consistent with what a crazy Hollywood celebrity thinks is the right answer.”

Oh, pleeeease. It sounds like American conservatives are simply using Prejean to advance their own out-of-step political ends. She’s a pretty tool, but a tool nonetheless.

Kent Jones, a regular contributor to MSNBC-TV’s Rachel Maddow Show, presented a segment last night about Prejean’s book, which is to be called Still Standing and appear in bookstores near you come November. Somehow we suspect that Jones’ “tribute” is much more entertaining than the finished tell-all volume will be.

Edwards Aide to Ink Tell-All

There’s something really awful in this item from Muckety:

A man who was one of former Senator John Edwards’s closest aides has a deal to write a tell-all book about Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter that among other things repudiates his earlier claim that he is the father of Hunter’s baby.

The aide, Andrew A. Young (not to be confused with politician and diplomat Andrew J. Young), reportedly signed a contract with St. Martin’s Press for an undisclosed price to tell his story about the former presidential candidate.

‘Nuff said about this one, I think. We’ll file it under Books You Just Don’t Want to Know About and call it done, done, done like dinner.

Streisand’s Ex-Beau Hand Slapped Over Proposed Tell-All

“Whatever happened to Jon Peters?”

“Who?”

“Jon Peters?”

“The Star 80 guy?”

“Naw. Not that guy. Maybe the guy who was boffin’ Streisand in the early 80s.”

“Oh, that guy. Maybe he’s dead?”

That might have been the conversation before last Friday when a shitstorm broke lose over the possible publication of a Jon Peters (“Jon who?”) tell-all that had the knickers of a lot of era stars in a twist last Friday. From The Wrap:

The Hollywood rumor mill was ablaze on Friday over the leaked proposal; speculation mounted that News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch, the parent company of Harper Collins, decided to pull out of the deal as too troublesome.

But The Wrap also seems fairly certain that the whole thing was a bit of a ploy by the coy:

But at least one prominent insider was convinced the entire incident was an exercise in attention-grabbing by Peters. "It's arranged hype," said this insider. "I don't think there's been any lawsuit at all."

Peters is already a somewhat notorious figure in Hollywood, a former hairdresser who rose through ambition and drive to cut a swath through the industry in the 1980s. Along with his former partner Peter Guber, he led Columbia- Sony Pictures and legendarily spent a fortune there before losing his job.

I remember Peters. Sorta. A lotta pretty hair in the shadow of Streisand. And while I sorta remember -- again, sorta -- I have trouble imagining exactly who would be rushing to buy that book. And, honestly, if you’ve been thinking about it, think again. There are a lot of terrific -- and even important -- books published every year. You’d likely feel more enriched by almost any of them than you would from the kind of trumped up tripe on offer here. Check it out:

In the noted Hollywood tradition of bridge-burning, the proposal included numerous outrageous stories and anecdotes, most of them depicting Peters as a street-smart macho man bedding his way across a sea of Hollywood goddesses, while bitch-slapping the town’s most feared figures, including Barry Diller and Ray Stark.

In one such story, two girlfriends called Peter from Washington to whisper: “I just f---ed the President.”

In another, he offers up stories about his former girlfriend Barbra Streisand – “he saw her becoming even hotter under his Pygmalion skills - and how producer Ray Stark had molested her during an audition.”

OK: that’s just stupid. Anyone who knows anything knows that Streisand was way hot before Peters ever dialed her number. Let’s just do the math: Streisand, who won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 1963, the same year Peters was allegedly 19.

Here’s the thing: every year thousands of books are published everywhere that are better/more intelligent/more meaningful than what we’re talking about here. This is just goofy. Please: be good and sensible people. Go and buy one of those better books.

Catcher in the Rye Sequel Probably a Hoax

Will this be what finally wrenches notoriously reclusive author J.D. Salinger from the comfy nest he’s been hiding out in for more than 50 years? Or was the book penned by Salinger in a lame disguise? Both are possible. Time will tell.

From the publisher’s description of Sixty Years Later: Coming Through the Rye:

A 76-year-old man wakes up in a nursing home in upstate New York. This seemingly normal day brings with it an unnerving compulsion to flee his present situation and embark on a curious journey through the streets of New York City. Powerless to resist these strange new urges, Holden Caulfield, like a decrepit marionette, finds himself in the midst of bizarre and occasionally depraved escapades. Is senility finally closing in or is some higher power controlling the chaos? 60 years after his debut as the great American anti-hero, Holden Caulfield is yanked back onto the page without a goddamn clue why.

The sequel will be published in September by a Swedish outfit called Nicotext. (“We make books. More specifically, we make books whose sole purpose it is to make you giggle. While thumbing our collective nose at the literati, we have found our niche amongst the useless, the trivial and the potentially offensive. The books in our catalogue may not reflect our capacity for intellectual athleticism, but they will put a smile on your face, which is our main objective.”)

It’s not by Salinger, but by (ahem) a freelance travel writer, “former gravedigger and Ironman triathlete” (what?) named John David California.

The world press and the blogosphere are abuzz. “The world needs a Catcher in the Rye sequel like it needs an asshole on its elbow,” Richard Lawson said for Gawker earlier today. The Guardian and the Quill and Quire blog offer up just-the-facts as they see them. However, considering author California’s bizarre biography and the fact that a sketchy Wikipedia entry lists his birthday as April 1st, I have a hunch we’ve not heard the last of this story. At all.

Jerry Hall Closes Book on Pricey Jagger Memoir

Two years into the writing of an “explosive tell-all book” about her life with lead Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, The Daily Mail reports that the project “has been abandoned in mysterious circumstances.”

The book, which Miss Hall has spent two years writing, will remain forever in manuscript form after she had an unexplained change of heart and reneged on a £1 million deal with HarperCollins.

The publisher is said to have become frustrated that, despite promises that the book would be overflowing with juicy detail about the Rolling Stones singer’s dalliances, 52-year-old Miss Hall provided only a very sanitised account.

So sad! The literary world can only sigh and wonder. Meanwhile, The Mail has said that HarperCollins has asked for the return of their £500,000 advance. (The cheek!)

The Mail’s story is here. Contact Music offers their short, sweet but basically identical explanation here.

Austen Zombie Author Will Write About Lincoln

This is just annoying: Seth Graham-Smith, the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books) has inked a six figure two-book deal with Grand Central.

According to EW, “The author’s first book with the publisher will be Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a re-imagined biography of the president, if he were a vampire hunter.” Ummm.... hello?

EW also reports that Hollywood is expressing interest. Was there ever any doubt?

And who said we weren’t ready for escapism? Let’s go to the bat-cave and discuss it.

In case you missed it, we previously wrote about Graham-Smith’s book here.

McCain Fille Inks Big, Fat Book Deal

Meghan McCain, daughter of former US presidential hopeful John McCain has signed a six figure deal with Hyperion. As The New York Observer breathlessly reported:

John McCain's 24-year-old daughter Meghan has a book deal! Sources say Hyperion has prevailed over at least three other publishers in an auction that began earlier this week, following a round of meetings during which the in-your-face young conservative and the literary agent she shares with her father, Sterling Lord Literistic president Flip Brophy, discussed a number of possible approaches to the book with editors around town.

Several sources said the advance Ms. McCain will receive from Hyperion, which is owned by the Disney Company, is in the high six figures.

It all makes me wonder, maybe McCain pere was looking too far North for a running mate in the 2008 US presidential elections? I’m not suggesting that choosing author/daughter/blogger Meghan over Alaska soap opera maven Sarah Palin would have delivered him to the White House (that would be silly), but maybe everyone wouldn’t have laughed so hard while he took a run at it?

The New York Observer’s reportage of Meghan’s book deal is here. The New York Times chimes in here. McCain’s surprisingly sharp scribblings on The Daily Beast are here.

Can S&S Touch This?

Simon & Schuster would like to claw back the $61,000 advance they gave to old school rapper MC Hammer back in 2002. From EURWeb News:

MC Hammer was sued by publishing house Simon & Schuster earlier this month over claims that he never finished an inspirational book for which he received advance money to write.

The 46-year-old Hammer, born Stanley Kirk Burrell, reached the zenith of his fame back in the late 1980s when he was best known for his rhymes and his pants.

The full story is here.

We Are Not Interested in Giving This Item Any Space

So we won’t give it much and, to be honest, we wouldn’t feel the need to talk about it all, except Quill & Quire’s Eric Emin Wood mentioned the item in a way that was so elegant and concise, the words themselves wanted sharing. Here goes:

One of the most tragic aspects of the publishing industry is recognizing the years of labour, research, networking, and luck that go into getting something onto shelves -- and then watching an idiot like this get handed a publishing contract.

Nice, right?

Wood’s Quillblog item is here and you can follow the links from there. (For the record, the idiot in question is former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. And there just isn’t anything else that could have made me look forward to Jon Bon Jovi’s book.)

Massive Dose of Motherhood Leads to Book Offers

Want a book deal? Aside from doing baseball-related stuff, or being a teen queen, one way to do it is to have a lot of children. That is a real lot of children. At least, that’s what a 33-year-old single mom in California has discovered.

It’s beginning to look like Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to octuplets on January 26th and who already had six children, aged two to seven, will have a book deal before very much time passes. With 14 tiny mouths to feed, though, I can’t imagine she’ll get much time for writing for the next decade or so.

The moral issues are plentiful and you don’t have to go far to find them. Here we’re just tallking book stuff though, and on that topic, Suleman’s publicist had a couple of things to say to AP:

The mother of the world’s longest-living octuplets is being deluged with offers for book deals, TV shows and other business proposals, but has not decided what she might do other than care for her children, her newly hired spokeswoman said Monday.

Hundreds of requests have been made since Nadya Suleman gave birth to six boys and two girls a week ago, said Joann Killeen, president of Killeen Furtney Group, a public relations company.

“She’s the most sought after mom in the world right now,” Killeen said. “Everyone wants to talk to her.”

No Line Up for Laura?

The Village Voice waxes snappy about why still First Lady Laura Bush “won’t be making a bundle from her memoirs.”

Our first lady (tick, tick, tick) Laura Bush is penning her memoirs, and reports say she’s getting a way smaller advance than the eight million whoppers Hillary Clinton nabbed for a somewhat similar work. And I have some pretty good ideas as to why that is. First of all, with the economy (and publishing) in the toilet, book advances are way lower than they used to be, and Laura has one whacked-out person she can thank for that--her husband!

Here’s another reason: we’re still way (way!) more excited about the new Pooh!

Skater and Singer Settle in to Write Deeply Meaningful Tomes

This just in from the It-Happened-So-Long-Ago-Why-Do-We-Even-Care-Anymore department:

Former U.S. skating champion-turned-reality TV star Tonya Harding has penned a tell-all book in a bid to show the public she doesn’t deserve her “bad girl” tag.

And this in a world where there are authors with exquisite novels languishing in a drawer. It makes one sad.

Harding explains, “I just wanted people to know me for me and not make judgments against me, like, how you see me on TV.”

Yeah. That oughta be a swell book.

And this is less odious, but still…

Kelly Rowland is working on a book for children.

The 27-year-old former Destiny’s Child singer revealed that she is looking into other ventures besides singing, and writing a children’s book is one of them.

“I’m getting into different ventures. I’m in the process of writing a children’s book," People quoted her, as saying.

The book is still under works and has not been given a title as yet, as she has just started working on it.

Books You Just Don’t Want to Know About

Lately it seems like every few days there’s a new crop of books announced that make you roll your eyes and pledge to avoid them. At the very least, they make you groan. Last week, the groaners for us were the prospect of Mylie Cyrus’ “memoir” and “rehab singer” Amy Winehouse’s (ahem) marriage manual.

In another groaner, we announced that Chuck Norris had been contracted to write a book about the time he spent on a bus with (then) presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. A few days later, Huckabee announced his own book, but by then we were so sick of hearing about him, we didn’t bother passing it on. (I mean, there’s who cares and then there’s who cares. In this case, I couldn’t make myself care enough to move fingers to type the story. I have a feeling that by the time that book appears, sales will reflect my apathy. Call that a crystal ball prediction. We’ll see how it all turns out.)

All of this is taking us pretty far from this week’s Books You Just Don’t Want to Know About. Ready? I knew you would be.

First up, you have this to look forward to:

A little more than a month after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced his resignation, Penguin Group imprint Portfolio will be publishing a book about his career “from start to finish,” president and publisher Adrian Zackheim told CNN.

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned from office in March, saying he wants to “atone for his personal failings.”

But here’s my favorite part:

Peter Elkind, editor-at-large at Fortune and author of a 2005 profile of the governor called “Satan or Savior?” in that magazine, will be collaborating with filmmaker Alex Gibney to produce a book and documentary which will be released together, according to Penguin spokeswoman Allison McLean.

So maybe I’m a little slow on the update, but are they calling the book Satan or Savior? Or From Start to Finish? Either would work pretty well. (And I do loathe titles that include punctuation. CNN has the whole skinny here, but everyone is talking about this one right now.

Now here is something completely different. It’s pretty subjective. I mean, I don’t want to know about this book, because I’m not so big on babies. If tiny humans are of interest to you, this may well be one you’ll care about. For the rest of us? Not so much.

Gurgle.com, a new mother and baby social networking site, which claims to be the UK’s first, is set to launch a series of books on parenting with publishing house HarperCollins.

Due to be published in spring 2009, the series of three paperback books aim to combine educational articles from the site with user-generated information.

Another from the blog-to-book department. Two, really:

A mere month after a book based on popular website Stuff White People Like was sold to Random House for a rumored $350k comes word of another blog-to-print deal. Postcards From Yo Momma, a website that runs user-submitted e-mails and chat transcripts from real moms, is being turned into a hardcover work of literature by the people at Hyperion, publishing next April.

And while both of these sound kinda fun (no babies!) I’m at a bit of a loss to understand why these high dollar deals are being made over what is basically reworked blog content. I mean, it sounds pretty good in theory, right? Clever content, wide established readership, yada yada yada. But unless my memory is playing tricks on me, this has been done before (and done and done) without a great deal of success. No crystal ball on this one, though. We’ll just have to wait and see.

And Then There Was the Time We Ran Out of Toothpaste…

Topping the list of book deals you shouldn’t ought to care about, 15-year-old country popper and famous daughter Mylie Cyrus has inked a deal to write something that sounds very like a memoir. According to The SF Gate:

The “Hannah Montana” star has reportedly signed a seven-figure deal with the Disney Book Group, and will write all about her upbringing in Tennessee and her rise to international stardom.

Collecting the recollections of your lifetime in book form when you’re 15 is just sad. In the first place, well… who cares? And in the second, at 15, even if you’ve done a lot -- really -- what have you done? And, worse, what do you follow it up with? At 21, are you completely washed up and looking over your shoulder at your bat mitzvah going, “Now those were the days!”

Literature might hit even higher heights next year: Amy Winehouse, the performer ANI is calling a “rehab singer,” has reportedly been offered close to two million dollars to talk about her marriage with “imprisoned husband” Blake Fielder-Civil. According to The Boston Herald, Winehouse “is still in talks with Penguin Publishers while Blake, 26, who is incarcerated with little else to do, has already agreed.” (Of course, he’s also reportedly selling topless photos of his bride to support his drug habit, so maybe he does have something else to do, after all.)

Norris Gets Patriotism in Print

Washington, DC’s Regnery Publishing has announced that they will be publishing a book by actor and martial arts expert, Chuck Norris. The actor and some time writer raised eyebrows earlier this year by touring with Mike Huckabee who was, at the time, a Republican presidential hopeful.

Regnery tells us the book, tentatively to be called Black Belt Patriotism “offers more than a cultural critique -- it’s a no-holds-barred assessment of American culture, from family values to national security. Black Belt Patriotism offers a unique perspective on the steps we must take to kick the problems plaguing America, straight from a true American icon.”

Can you say, “Yikes!” (I knew you could.)

According to Regnery, “Norris is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, a philanthropist, martial arts expert, and TV and film actor. Best known for his TV series Walker, Texas Ranger -- Norris toured Iraq in 2006 & 2007, shaking hands & taking pictures with more than 38,000 troops.”

The book will be published this summer.