Well kids, it's time for another superficial examination of the latest products from the vast lumber-processing mills of Bertelsmann AG and Viacom, which together just bought the rights to your life story, due out next year for $23, $33.50 in Canada.
You Remind Me of Me
By Dan Chaon, $24.95
While we're on the subject of children, along comes this book by a loser of the National Book Awards (and isn't that what "finalist" really means?) about a bastard of a father rearing his son to be an even better bully than he was as a kid. It starts off with tying classmates' shoe laces together and ends in murder!
Red Grooms: A Retrospective
By Arthur C. Danto, Timothy Hyman and Marco Livingstone, $65
Just when you thought Where's Waldo? was too hard, along comes Red Grooms, the story of some Russian brothers who become mail-order husbands to a variety of women in New York. The brothers get lost upon deplaning, each taking separate cabs from JFK. Just try and find them in this giant kid's book for grown-ups that's also a retrospective, and ends in murder!
Skinny Dip
By Carl Hiaasen, $24.95
Today, we all know Mary Worth as the loveable matron, dispenser of sage advice and queller of domestic disturbance. But little did we know that Worth's youth was full of wild sex, drugs and naked swims with the likes of a young Steve Canyon and Rex Morgan, medical student. Author Carl Hiaasen digs deep into Worth's sordid past to uncover her secrets, and ends in murder!
Sam's Letters to Jennifer
By James Patterson, $24.95
We know by this cover that the author's sense of self is far more important than the letters he found in a deserted shack in the Louisiana swamps. Just as well, since the correspondance that Patterson transcribes is one-sided, the route to the nearest post office being fraught with danger, alligators, rabid cranes and sure to end in murder!
Sirio
By Sirio Maccioni and Peter Elliot, $29.95
Subtitled The Story of My Life and Le Cirque, this wonderful autobiography offers us a look behind the curtains at the man who created the magical, wonderful world of Cirque du Soleil. Sure, he might look like a middle-aged businessman now, but back in the day, he was a Montreal street performer with a twinkle in his and a bag of magic pixie dust! Sadly, it ends in mur—restaurant? What restaurant?