Last week, cops in Wisconsin apprehended a 20-year-old girl who worked two jobs, cuffed her, and hauled her into jail for the failure to return two library books—one of which was an Oprah Book Club selection. This week, a Maine old lady is being threatened with jail time for refusing to return a library book:It's about sex and puberty, and she deems it dangerous for kids: "I'm going to hang on to the book, your honor." Reports the Sun Journal:

"At least a half-dozen major publishers took a look before Dominick Anfuso, editorial director of Free Press, landed the deal... The narrative thread is expected to be the eight final swims of the 2008 games." You think? [Post]

If The Ramen King and I: How the Inventor of Instant Noodles Fixed My Love Life. is actually real forthcoming work of nonfiction could someone please send us a galley? Thanks.

Catcher in the Rye: Why is every teenager still reading it? So asks an English teacher in Good Magazine who claims its only merits are that it is short, full of cuss words and wholly lacking in references to other books high schoolers have not read. Well, yeah!. Plus there are other literary works that have more cuss words and "social currency" than Catcher in the Rye. Like the Gossip Girl books and Lindsay Lohan's MySpace blog! So why won't it go away?My initial reaction to this would be that we read Catcher In The Rye because everyone on some level at some point loves Catcher In The Rye and we are fast running out of things we can say that about.* I am not quite sure why, I thought to myself upon scanning this essay. But high school will always need Salinger. Maybe because he actually himself had an eating disorder? I wasn't quite sure. And then I read this!

Someday, everyone reading this is going to die! And we should all get started on whatever we really want to do now, because the Grim Reaper could come to collect us at any minute. He's already come for Dave Freeman, co-author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die: Travel Events You Just Can't Miss. Mr. Freeman died at his home last week after falling and hitting his head—he was 47.Events that we just "can't miss" before we die, according to his book's table of contents, include the Iditarod, New Year's Eve in Times Square, the Navajo Nation Fair, something called the "Testicle Festival," and Burning Man. With that in mind, I guess I really want to go to France! Haven't been there yet. Also Thailand. But there is no way in hell I'm going to work myself into a hell-demon acid trip with a bunch of hippies in the desert at Burning Man—dead or not dead.

This is the cover of the upcoming book from New York's favorite scruffy musician and flâneur, Ryan Adams. It's called Infinity Blues. Can somebody at Akashic send me the galleys of this please?! Thanks.

When Alex Bogusky, the ad guru for Burger King and Domino's Pizza (among others), announced last week that he is publishing a diet book, the general reaction was, "Ha, hypocrite Whopper-seller." An alternate theory, though, is that the book is part of some elaborate hoax, or will turn out to be the peg for a new Bogusky ad campaign. But if it is, he's doing a good job keeping it a secret; Burger King and Domino's, the two fatty food-touting clients most obviously affected by the book, had to find out about it by reading a news story:

Serious writers like to think "no," but of course they would—if the money was right. Writes Tod Goldberg in the LA Times, he got a call wondering if "I might be interested in writing original novels based on Burn Notice, the popular show on USA about a blacklisted spy named Michael Westen, who uses his training to help people out of bad situations (with the mob, drug dealers, pimps, etc.)." After much hang-wringing, he said yes—and ended up becoming emotionally attached to the characters in the show he was now writing about:

Joe Biden's memoir is suddenly a bestseller, thanks to his being chosen as Obaba's running mate. [New York Sun]

Dexter Filkins spent four years covering the Iraq War for the New York Times. Today, the paper's magazine has an excerpt of his upcoming book, The Forever War. Filkins is a beautiful writer, which only serves to enhance the enormous sadness of his story. The piece pulses not with political outrage, but with weariness over a steady diet of death. After the jump, one small excerpt: Filkins tells how his desire for a photo of a dead insurgent ended with a Marine shot and killed:

Biggie Smalls was one of the greatest rappers of our generation. Way nicer lyrically than the more iconic Tupac, his fellow murdered MC. Another point in favor of Biggie: he had a crazier wife. That would be Faith Evans, the Bad Boy R&B singer who is most famous for-let's be honest-being Biggie's wife. Now Faith has written an autobiographical book, and although I'm sure there's lots in there about empowerment, mourning, etc., check out this part where she sneaks into Biggie's house, pulls Lil Kim out of his bed, and beats her ass!:

Small-town Michigan librarian "Ann Miketa" wrote a book about the batshit-crazy patrons she encountered at her job all day, called Library Diaries, and was promptly fired, reports the Chicago Tribune. But think for a minute how weird library patrons really are: these people obviously have nothing to do and nowhere to go. And everyone knows that they use the library's computers for porn—that's been a well-documented problem for years. First sign that this book is probably awesome: Miketa refers to her rural town as "Denialville."Sounds familiar! Maybe we went to highschool together. From the introduction:

In the flurry of post-Olympic endorsement deals, swimmer Michael Phelps will write a book about his life leading up to his historic eight-gold win. It'll be published by Simon & Schuster imprint Free Press. Michael: please include some sex bits please. Maybe about all the sex everyone had in the Olympic Village. Thanks! [Yahoo]

This sweet-looking 20-year-old lady was handcuffed and arrested over two overdue library books in Wisconsin. We know you're wondering which books they were: "Janet Fitch's best-seller White Oleander (a 1999 Oprah Book Club selection) and Angels & Demons, author Dan Brown's precursor to The Da Vinci Code." Check out the incident report, via Smoking Gun:

The central section of Greenwich Village, near that haven for nostalgic expats called Tea & Sympathy, has always drawn the English. A 1902 New York Times guide to the 'British Quarter' describes rather unflatteringly the neighborhood's inhabitants: "ruddy, grizzled, thick-necked, opinionated and slangy." We owe this vignette to Toby Young, the famously unsuccessful Vanity Fair writer who parlayed his failure in New York into an amusing book, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, the basis for an upcoming movie starring Simon Pegg and Jeff Bridges.

Does any fameball author tell the truth ever anymore? Nope. Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie's former driver/bodyguard wrote a tell-all memoir about his years doing special protection, On Her Majesty's Service. Already he's had to admit that some of the parts excerpted in the Daily Mail last Sunday were lies. "The authors have admitted that there were falsehoods in the original manuscript and have made amendments accordingly," Rushdie's lawyer told the Guardian. Whoops! So they're fixing the book and releasing it again.

Earlier, we snarked that being on the "extended" NYT bestseller list doesn't really count, re: David Carr and his August 24th showing on the extended list. But we've just learned that he made the August 31st "regular" bestselling list—at #12 for nonfiction.

Alex Bogusky, the it-boy ad wizard who thinks up all those Burger King commercials, is worried about America's fat ass! So he's writing a new diet book called The 9-Inch Diet. Oh sorry, we see that it's "not just another diet book." This one has added expertise:

A blogger recently "reviewed" uber-book-publicist Sloane Crosley's book of essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, on her personal blog. "I too am a twenty-something year old self-absorbed, middle-class angst who can relate to quite a few of Sloane’s shenanigans. Oh you know, the standard white-girl fare..." Cute, whatever. But! This very same blogger, we notice, can relate to quite a few of Sloane's shenanigans: she's written essays in the past month on her blog about a.) being a bad vegetarian, b.) being a pack rat, and c.) spending a childhood playing the videogame Oregon Trail. Coincidentally, Crosley's book features essays about each of these subjects. Hatecrush alert! Let's compare and contrast:From Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake:

Newlywed, former Anna Wintour underling, and bestselling chick-lit author Lauren Weisberger seems to be crowdsourcing ideas for her fourth book. Is she being serious? Maybe! "As always, I invite you to write in with any story ideas..."