Photo: George Bush's Facebook Page Random House released numbers for Decision Points today. It's pretty good, but doesn't compare to the 400,000 copies that Bill Clinton's My Life sold on its opening day. But, for Clinton's book, we had been waiting twice as long, so maybe it all evens out. Either way, the lesson is clear: Book sales and television ratings have nothing to do with each other. ... more.

Photo: Patrick McMullen Jonathan Lethem had one directive from the editor of Deep Focus, a new series of short books in which novelists dissect one film apiece: "Go off-canon." Mission accomplished. The author and itinerant critic, a self-described "big Criterion Collection guy" with plenty of highbrow enthusiasms, chose They Live, John Carpenter's 1988 cult sci-fi flick, in which a hobo played b... more.

Photo: Grove/Atlantic Roger Sterling's divine folly-autobiography Sterling’s Gold is now a real book coming out from Grove/Atlantic just in time for the holidays. So, as high-roller Sterling might have advised, we took our questions about the in-show book’s real-world development straight to the top. Grove’s publisher Morgan Entrekin tells us that he first caught up with Mad Men... more.

Photo: Jeff Vespa / Wire Image Ever since his arc on Six Feet Under as creepy tenant Arthur, Rainn Wilson has made a fine living playing intense oddballs and weirdos, whether — most notably — as Dwight Schrute on The Office, or in such films as House of 1000 Corpses and Juno. His most recent indie, Super, just got picked up by IFC and stars Wilson as a short-order cook who becomes a s... more.

Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images In Rubber Balls and Liquor, Gilbert Gottfried reminds us that he’s willing to joke about anything … as if we’ve forgotten. Released on the heels of his Aflac scandal, the book (his first) is part memoir, part story-telling, part observational humor. If you’re willing to give Gottfried's book a chance — too soon? — you might ... more.

Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images "Comedian" and shrill-voiced human Gilbert Gottfried was fired on Monday from his job as the voice of the Aflac duck, after tweeting jokes about the Japanese disaster. As of Monday night, the offending tweets were taken off of Gottfried's Twitter feed, but included, "Japan called me. They said 'maybe those jokes are a hit in the U.S., but over here, they're all si... more.

Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin is on the record as being disappointed in the ending of Lost, much to Damon Lindelof's consternation. But last night at the Time 100 Gala, hatchets (or Direwolves, if you rather) were buried, when Martin and Lindelof's Lost partner Carlton Cuse had an air-clearing discussion. Cuse tweeted, "Just had a very nice chat wit... more.

Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images Prodigy, one half of Mobb Deep — the Queens rap duo whose mid-nineties discography is part of the bedrock of East Coast hip-hop — has been a busy man since his release from prison in March. After serving three years for criminal possession of a weapon (police found a gun in his car during a traffic stop), the Queens emcee quickly released an autobiogra... more.

Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. (The other two finalists were Jonathan Dee's The Privileges and Chang-rae Lee's The Surrendered.) Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies: A History of Cancer took the nonfiction prize; Kay Ryan won for poetry, and Bruce Norris's play Clybourne Park for drama. If you haven't already read Goon Squad, whi... more.

James Frey has circumvented traditional publishers and teamed up with art-gallery owner Larry Gagosian, who will publish just 11,000 copies of Frey's next book, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, which Frey will also self-publish online. In the book, the second coming of Christ takes place in the Bronx projects, and the Messiah turns out to be Ben Jones, a bisexual alcoholic who impregnates a... more.

Last time James Frey appeared on Oprah, in 2006, it was to receive a very public dressing-down for having presented his drug memoir A Million Little Pieces as nonfiction. Oprah was seriously disappointed: "That's a lie. It's not an idea, James. That's a lie." Since then, Oprah has actually apologized to Frey and even asked him to come on the show, but it hasn't worked out — until now! Frey ... more.

The writer Elif Batuman has a funny, charming essay in the Guardian about the general weirdness of having written a well-received, successful book (in her case, the funny, charming essay collection The Possessed), and the specific weirdness of attending the National Book Critics Circle award. Why were the NBCC's particularly weird? Because at those awards, Batuman asked Jonathan Franzen for some ... more.

Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images Ashley Judd is catching some flack for dissing rap and hip-hop in her newly released memoir, All That Is Bitter and Sweet. In the book, Judd says that she was initially hesitant to work with YouthAIDS because of the organization's affiliation with Snoop Dogg and P. Diddy. "As far as I’m concerned, most rap and hip-hop music — with its rape culture and ... more.

While pursuing her ambition to become the posher Martha Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow has displayed a real knack for giving great aphorism. Her cookbook abounds with them (they make forexcellent theater), and every time she opens her mouth, another quoteable comes tumbling out. Speaking with the New Yorker at a dinner party in honor of her cookbook (she invited a bunch of famous people over and had t... more.

Eater has quite the panoply to choose from, since the only thing tastier than the food in My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness is Paltrow's perfectly phrased privilege. We're partial to "One cold wintry day in London, I was dreaming about salad niçoise — one of my favorites," and "I first had a version of this at a Japanese monastery during a ... more.

This is the video of Gwyneth Paltrow performing Cee Lo’s "Forget You" on next week's Glee. There is no way to sugarcoat this: It is great. The silliest! The cheesiest! The most cornball-dance-move-iest! The how many faces can one person pull in less than three minutes-iest! But also, it is the best-iest. Over the next few months we may have occasion to recategorize this period as just a bli... more.

Photo: Wikimedia, Joe Kohen/Getty Images The reviews keep coming in for The Pale King, but in this week's New Yorker, Jonathan Franzen has a rich, raw, complicated remembrance of his friend David Foster Wallace. It's an essay framed by Franzen's trip to a remote island in the South Pacific, to go bird-watching, reread Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and find the solitude necessary to keep his pr... more.

The reviews are in for Tina Fey's Bossypants, and they're generally positive, with a few veering into glowing-like-a-supernova territory. Several compare Fey to Nora Ephron, and nearly all mention Sarah Palin, but there seems to be one thing the reviewers can't agree on: Is Bossypants a memoir or what? Newsweek says that "this is a memoir, not a humor sketch." ABC and USA Today call it a straigh... more.

Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images J.J. Abrams isn't content to keep his work confined to the moving image; nay, he's now poised to tackle the printed word, too. Little, Brown announced today that it acquired a book based on Abrams's idea that will be written by Alive in Necropolis author Doug Dorst. In typical Abrams style, details of the project are scant, but the book will come out in fall 2012.... more.

Photo: Michael Buckner/Getty Images Bob Mould — first and best known as front man of seminal eighties rockers Hüsker Dü, then later a solo artist, D.J., and singer for the band Sugar — has written a memoir, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, and it will be out via Little, Brown in June. It is co-written, appropriately, by Our Band Could Be Your Life's Michael ... more.