We give up! 'Stuff White People Like' Book Sold to Random House For At Least $350,000. You win, Internet! Great work, Random House! Oh hey, Spy legend and man white people love Kurt Andersen "has taken an active interest in it and will play a role in its development." Thanks, Kurt! The press release says the book will cover "Whole Foods, Wes Anderson, Starbucks, graduate school, kitchen gadgets, Barack Obama, Apple products, the movie Juno, expensive sandwiches, and vintage t-shirts, to name a few." Looks like white people like New York Magazine! (ALSO: Gotham Books is apparently publishing a book based on "Barack Obama is your new bicycle." Maybe some joker should make a whole album of hilarious Rick Astley songs!) [NYO]

Would you read a tell-all book from two former concierges at Chicago's upscale Four Seasons Hotel? Well, you can't: Random House/Three Rivers Press has canceled Great Reservations: Two Concierges Dish About Outrageous Requests, Celebrity Encounters, and Guests Behaving Badly at a Luxury Hotel. For making it all up? No, it's because they were "legally banned" from writing about said experiences by signing a confidentiality agreement with their former employer. Gotta read the fine print, gals! (The book had "anecdotes on such celebrities as Madonna (who had a 'phobialike aversion' to air conditioning) and Sir Anthony Hopkins," reports the AP.)

British dandy and self-taught expert in criminality Sebastian Horsley was stopped at JFK on his way into our country for his book party yesterday, and sent right back home to London, as we learned last night. But! The party must go on. A Harper-Collins rep informed us the party for Horsley's Dandy in the Underworld is still on for tonight, at Housing Works. Only now, as the attached invite shows, it's a "LET SEBASTIAN IN RALLY." We think we've got just about enough book-releasing dandies, thank you very much, but hell, what's one more.

88-year-old Horst Rippert, a German fighter pilot during WWII, learned that he shot down and killed one of his favorite authors during the war: Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince and seven other books. Rippert learned the identity of one of his "kills" through a historian writing Saint-Exupery's biography; he told the Mail, "I knew he was a French pilot, but he was probably my favourite author at the time... I am shocked and sorry." [Mail on Sunday]

Ew: David Berkowitz, the jailed "Son of Sam" serial killer who stalked New York women in the late 70s, has written a book: Son of Hope—The Prison Journals of David Berkowitz, Volume 1. He's a Christian now! Village Voice columnist Michael Musto begs us not to buy it: "I can still vividly remember being a teen harlot when Berkowitz was killing people left and right in my native Brooklyn, and having to race home from the subway after a night at Studio 54, terrified that he'd put an end to my partying." Know who also has a new book out? Jimmy Breslin (The Good Rat), badass Pulitzer-winning reporter who was at the Daily News when he received a weirdo handwritten letter from Berkowitz: "Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C. which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood..." An excerpt of Berkowitz's book follows, which refers to something called "the Force."

Novelist Irvine Welsh found a bunch of notes for his 1993 novel Trainspotting, about the seamy, druggy world of Edinburgh junkies in the 80s, and decided there's enough for a prequel. The prequel will cover the halcyon younger days of his main characters, and their descent: "It's about how Renton and Sick Boy went from being daft young guys just out for the buzz on drugs, to total junkies," he told London's Times. [Times Online]

A bomb threat briefly cleared out thousands of people from the prestigious Paris International Book Fair, probably 'cause they are honoring Israeli writers this year, although the fake-bomb-threat caller made no mention of that fact. [International Herald Tribune]

Stars are just like us, but sometimes it's hard to be just like a star. You could try adopting a kid from Rhodesia, but Rhodesia doesn't exist anymore which could make flying out there to get the kid a real pain. But when stars read, it's a good reminder that you may know how to read as well. And who else are you going to take book advice from? Your friend who is still talking about She's Come Undone, or Paris Hilton, who loved, loved, loved The Power of Now? Obviously, Paris. She increased sales of the book 50 percent after being photographed with it. The saddest part of this is imagining a writer hearing the "good news" that Lindsay Lohan has been photographed reading his book. [Portfolio]

"100 Best Last Lines From Novels" (PDF) [via Kottke]

Aaaaand, it's Kate Christensen, author of the novel The Great Man, which "satirizes the New York art world." Hey, looks like she lives in Greenpoint. [NYO]

As we mentioned yesterday, the Economist's More Intelligent Life blog has compiled their favorite book and film critics. We've compiled the faces on their list, and a poll! Go vote for the best. Remember: life is a contest, and only one person can win.

More Intelligent Life, the Economists's lifestyle blog, is picking their favorite film and book critics. In books, the New Yorker's James Wood came out on top.

Regarding the fake memoir crisis, and its effect on budding writers: sometimes, your life, or the lives that touch yours, are so "bafflingly fucked" that the only thing to do is write about it. After the jump, two memoirists (one published, one not) with Dickensian backgrounds talk about the Frey/Leroy/Seltzer clusterfuck that conspired to cast doubt on their stories. (One way to prove that your homeless memoir is true? Dump memorabilia from your years as a waif on their desks!)

We want your stories about how fake memoirists are messing up your damn writing career! Here, we have the tale of a young surgical resident whose operating-table narrative is being held back "in this current climate." "Thank goodness I've got a fondness for amber liquors," he adds. What's up, Doc?

Are you writing a memoir or nonfiction right now? Have you experienced backlash in the wake of fake-memoir scandals? Tell us about it! We'll keep it anonymous.

Click to find out! [via The Onion]

The fake memoirist/non-gang member's believers included Inga Muscio, friend and feminist author of Cunt: A Declaration of Independence. Muscio introducted Seltzer to her agent, which resulted in the deal for Seltzer's Love and Consequences. Seltzer is either a bit crazy, or a total Method actor, because "everyone who has met her for the past ten years knows her to be the person she describes in the book," says Muscio on her feisty blog. Also: Muscio is pissed that by talking to a NYT reporter (and EW) about Seltzer, their names are now linked in the media. Even worse, two of Seltzer's lies ended up in Muscio's latest book, Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil.

Did you know that NYT executive editor Bill Keller has a new book out? That's OK, neither did anyone else! It's called Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela, and it's sold 926 copies, according to BookScan. It's a biography for children from ages 9 to 12. As Portfolio points out, it didn't really get any press. Except, of course, for two mentions in the Times. [Portfolio Mixed Media]

We realize that former mag queen Tina Brown is still a "name" and Hillary Clinton's last week was a compelling story (resembling though it did so many of her previous weeks) but isn't there a wee bit of favoritism involved in a newsweekly running a front page story on a presidential candidate written by a woman who needs that candidate to become president in order for her forthcoming book to actually sell? [Newsweek]

"To discredit Love and Consequences... allows Americans the luxury of continuing to ignore the problems the book represents, or at best of waiting for another voice to bring it to our attention. Every memoir or autobiography is an individual's fashioning of his or her life, directed toward that individual's conception of audience. The more intimate or psychological the events recounted - of childhood trauma, of addiction, of religious conversion, or even of racial identity - the more ludicrous it is for readers to insist upon documentary truth." [Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard via MediaBistro]