Here, an excerpt from WSJ reporter Kate Kelly's soon-to-be-released book on the fall of Bear Stearns, in which she relates how former Bear CEO Jimmy Cayne (who recently called her a "cunt") smokes mad weed:

Elizabeth Edwards is, obviously, more or less the most sympathetic woman in the world, as a cancer survivor married to an asshole who cheated on her with some hippie freak. But no one likes her.

Here's encouraging news for Kathy Freston: The hardcore vegan and dieting devotee may finally be able to let Oprah go as her most famous devotee now that it appears she may have found someone else willing to try her 21-day cleanse. Harvey Weinstein's wife, fashion designer Georgina Chapman, told a reporter at Freston's book party yesterday that she and Harvey "need to try" the cleanse. Sounds promising! And after all, it's not like diet endorsements don't run in the family! [NYO]

Ayelet Waldman is smugly married to Michael Chabon and wrote about how fucking her husband is more fun than dealing with her kids, which, let's hope so, right? She's written a book about her pain!

He was once a national pariah, a fraud. Then James Frey scored a $1.5 million advance for his first novel, which sold briskly. Now Frey wants another mint, off the paperback, so he's targeting Oprah.

So Glenn Beck has agreed to write books for children and teenagers. We almost missed that when reading about the Fox Newser's book deal today. We almost weren't terrified.

In case there was any doubt he's a walking angel among us, Chesley Sullenberger has done penance for being overdue on a library book stuck in that plane he safely landed on the Hudson River.

The "Crisis Response Team" of a tiny little Minnesota town put together a book to help children deal with disasters. Let's learn and grow together.

Christopher Buckley's family tell-all has already made him some enemies. Will people look more kindly on the writer's crusade to break the news of his father's suicide urge?

In your inhumane Friday media column: Layoffs at NPR, another freakin' Dubya('s dad) book, newspapers burn as usual, New York mag has ad trouble, and Sean Hannity's waterboarding money appears!

What madness is this: some joker is selling a used copy of Page Sixer Paula Froelich's not-released-yet book for $81.18, on Amazon. Coincidentally, that was GM's average hourly wage in 2006. "Coincidentally." [Amazon]

The idea of a book of microblogging "tweets" really bugs some people. Our own Nick Douglas, author of the forthcoming TwitterWit, already knows that. Now a New York Times columnist is feeling the hate.

Levi Johnston, a 19-year-old Alaskan who, unlike Meghan McCain, has held a real job, is going to write a book. Maybe. Or maybe not!

Jonathan Jaxson—world's worst publicist, victim of Perez Hilton's sex cons—is so over all this bullshit celebrity culture. (Well after the rest of us!) Still needing cash, though, he's got a book proposal.

Jill Kargman's new novel, The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund, was written before the economy came crashing down, which explains why if you pick up a copy—it came out last week—you may feel like you've been transported back in time to the middle of 2006, when everyone walking down Park Avenue was full of optimism and no one had any problem spending $50,000 on a two-year-old's birthday party. Things have changed a bit since then, although Kargman isn't allowing the unfortunate timing of her novel derail her PR campaign. Quite the opposite, in fact: Her book party this evening will feature a blood-red cocktail called the "Nightmare On Wall Street," and she's using the financial crisis to detail how some of the city's richest women have been coping with the downturn.

Randall Munroe, creator of the awesome (and popular) Web comic xkcd, skipped past the overtures of large publishers when it came time to publish his work on paper. Instead he's working with "breadpig." WTF?

The writer of Crash and the autobiographical Empire of the Sun had been battling prostate cancer. He was inspired by science fiction, but placed his novels outside the genre, rooting them in the modern world.

You know what the world desperately needs? Another hastily-written, bandwagon-jumping dating manual that details all the ways in which single women must lie, fake, manipulate, and tie themselves up in knots so that some guy might consent to be their boyfriend. So yay for Rachel Greenwald—a Harvard MBA, no less—who has scraped what we hope to God is the final layer from the bottom of this tragic genre's barrel with the imaginatively-titled Why He Didn't Call You Back. Go on, aren't you dying to hear?

Page Sixer Paula Froelich has a book coming out called Mercury in Retrograde ("chick lit"). The current cover, pictured, is rather serene. But the original cover, pictured below, was more DYNAMIC:

Liz Smith reports:

(UPDATED) After stripping sales rankings from a variety of gay-themed books, from romance novels to histories, Amazon.com now blames "a glitch" for the changes and promises a fix. Good luck selling that line.