Simpson’s Farce

We’ve refrained from commenting at all on the stomach-turning mutations of the Simpson book saga. We weren’t shy -- we seldom are -- but the clamour everyone else was making was enough, somehow. More than that. Through all of the odious permutations to this story, there’s been something untouchable about it. Almost as though any type of comment was more than what was deserved. And maybe -- just maybe -- there was a touch of denial in that response. As though if we ignored it hard enough, it would all just go away.

Well, we ignored. And it went away. And then it came back in a different form. As I write this, it’s a top bestseller. Despite all our ignoring.

In Friday’s Los Angeles Times, Pat Morrison nailed the odiousness perfectly:

When someone pulls on gloves to open a book, it’s usually a priceless volume: a Jane Austen first edition or a signed galley proof of “Harry Potter.”

I wanted to put on gloves to read “If I Did It” also, but for different reasons. The “yuck” factor in O.J. Simpson’s “hypothetical” account of how he would have murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman is so high that the needle soars right off the scale.

We won’t revisit this one. We don’t need to. This isn’t literature. As Morrison says so well, “the book fits Karl Marx’s useful observation about history: first act tragedy, second act farce.”

’Nuff said. Here’s the link to Morrison’s piece.

You Know You’ve Been Hanging Around the Book Business Too Long When...

... You see this headline:

“D.C. Madam” case enthralls capital

... And all you wanna know is when the book deal will be announced.

Spears Prepares to Dance With her Muse

I’m a little embarrassed to be typing these words, but it is news and people will care. And though I suspect a lot of January’s readers might not be those people who care about this particular piece of news, they’ll still want to know, if you follow. And so here we are.

According to Inside Entertainment’s virtual edition, “Britney Spears is supposedly going to put pen to paper and divulge all her inner thoughts and secrets in an autobiography.”

Here’s the thing: if she does somehow manage to get all those words into book form -- or find a way to trick someone else into doing it for her -- the book will find a publisher and will likely sell a lot of copies.

Sometimes you just can’t help wonder why you get out of bed in the morning.

The virtual Inside Edition piece is here.

Teen Boys Scarred and Scared by Lesbian Sex Book

This one definitely comes to us via the WTF department:

A Bentonville, Ark., man is seeking $20,000 from the city after his two teenage sons found a book on lesbian sex on a public library bookshelf.

He also wants the library director fired.

Earl Adams said his 14- and 16-year-old sons were “greatly disturbed” after finding the book, titled “The Whole Lesbian Sex Book.” Adams said the book caused “many sleepless nights in our house.”

There’s just so much wrong with these there short paragraphs. In the first place, I’m having a tough time imagining the teen boys who would be put off their feed by literary descriptions of lesbian sex, let alone tell their father about it. And just in case you’re wondering what sort of porn the Bentonville, Arkansas library is stocking, “The book, by Felice Newman, is a sex guide deemed suitable for all public libraries, according to the Library Journal, which the Bentonville library uses to decide what to place on its shelves.”

It astonishes me that Bentonville has acted so quickly and pulled the book. Just about every library and bookstore in the world has at least one copy of something that will disturb someone on some level. (I routinely avoid photographic depictions of insects, for instance.) If a book bothers you, it’s very easy to avoid it. (I know this from personal experience. Back up a few lines to see about the whole insect thing.) What I never get is how some people are so concerned about what other people are reading/eating/watching on television. Please: if something bugs you, don’t read it. Just leave the library shelves -- and the good people who keep them stocked -- alone.

And it should be mentioned that all of this has nothing at all to do with The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden. AP recently called the Iggulden’s book “a deliberately retro tome that has become the publishing sensation of the year in Britain.” The book has been on UK bestseller lists for months and was named Book of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards in March. Again from AP:

Exuding the brisk breeziness of Boy Scout manuals and Boy’s Own annuals, “The Dangerous Book” is a childhood how-to guide that covers everything from paper airplanes to go-carts, skipping stones to skinning a rabbit.

The Book Standard suggests that The Dangerous Book for Boys has sold “more than 550,000 copies to date” and all of this without even a hint of lesbian sex.