The Paper Clip

Well they done did it this time. Barnes & Noble has put David Sedaris's new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, on the fiction shelf after it was published as nonfiction and he said it was 97 percent true.

Also, he's creepy and cruises for men at signings!

Well, she made it fun for a while. I had been wondering where she went and why her name had been removed from the masthead. When you start a book blog, what else is there to do really?

Fortunately, my AvantGuild membership at MediaBistro is up today! And so with that goes my GalleyCat emails.

Ack! Good thing the unbetrothed author of Funny Facebook Deals won't have to write anything: "Sometimes," he writes "people post interesting sounding Facebook statuses."

 Well, they do!

 [via Gawker]

I've been talking about embarrassing book trailers since I started Paper Clip a day and a week ago. But all the sad trailers I saw elicited no humor. Of course, Gawker has found one. And in the Wall Street Journal of all places!

"I didn't write the Kama Sutra," he confessed, "but I wish I had."

So does Padma!

I almost spelled Kama Sutra, Comma Sutra.

Nonfiction. I've always been a huge exaggerator, but when I write something, I put it on a scale. And if it's 97% true, I think that's true enough. I'm not going to call it fiction because 3% of it isn't true.

This comes from an article in Time where readers can ask David Sedaris questions. He even answers them! What else do they want to know?

Are you ever jealous of your sister Amy?

Have you remained smoke-free?

[via NY Observer]

A so-called masturbation pamphlet that has dominated German bestseller lists and climbed its way to Amazon's number-one international bestselling spot will be offending its way onto US shelves.

Feuchtgebiete will be titled Wetlands in English (other rough translations and runners up include Humid Zones and Moist Patches). By taking on anal intercourse, intimhygiene (I don't know either), masturbation techniques, shaving techniques, and prostitution, the 70 percent autobiographical novel has fräuleins from the Rhine to Berlin saying it was written for them. It's about the ugly parts of a woman's body — an argument for less strigent hygiene. For some it's a feminist manifesto, a "protest against Heidi Klum." For others, it's literary porn. Shocking. Explicit. Accomplished. I hear nobody looks at an avocado the same. 

Charles Dickens's desk sold!  To Tom Higgins, Irish journalist, entrepreneur, and tarot-card reader. "A bargain," he said at $894,000, "I expected it could have gone for as much as £5 million."

Good find! With the $9 million saved, he plans to be Ireland's first space tourist.