"The media went on a rampage, blaming me for the whole O.J. book debacle. They came out, guns blazing, and tried to kill me. I felt like Faye Dunaway's character in the final scene of Bonnie and Clyde. Bullets flying in every direction," former publisher Judith Regan writes in her hotly-anticipated Harper's Bazaar profile of herself. You know, the one where she talks about having sung 'My Way!' It's on newsstands now, and it is all about how she "took the blows." In fact, this phrase comes up several times. In one instance she writes that something happened "after a month of taking the blows without protection." Shots! Blows! Attempts on Judith's very life! What is fact here and what's hyperbole? Does Judith Regan believe in distinguishing between the two?

Ian McEwan, the serious literary yet still sort of airport-y author of Atonement, whose books all hinge on one dramatic moment when something terrible happens tells the Wall Street Journal today that his books don't all hinge on one dramatic moment when something terrible happens. "All it really says is that in my novels something happens. It got said, and then it got into the loop. It's a truism, really. It's true of any novel." Well, any novels that are made into big weepy holiday blockbusters.

We hear that the auction for 'The Last Lecture,' WSJ reporter Jeffrey Zaslow's poignant life-affirming book about cancerous professor and daytime talk-show regular Randy Pausch, has ended. However, the two final bidders (most likely Hyperion and HarperCollins) are now having what's known as a "beauty contest," where they jockey to demonstrate to the author and agent that they'd do best by the author. Publisher's Lunch dismisses the $6.75 million figure Keith Kelly quotes as being in highly inflated "New York Post dollars," But since we heard $6 million on Monday, we're inclined to believe that publishers really are banking on ill-fated profs being the new ill-fated pets.

"The NBAs are like the Oscars, except the acceptance speeches are longer and no one is attractive," an agent observed as a burbling, mostly elderly crowd gathered for cocktails outside a ballroom at the Marriot Marquis last night. Au contraire! Author-hottie Josh Ferris was looking Hollywood handsome, decked out in a tux adorned with his Finalist medal. He and Jim Shephard, who was also in contention for the fiction prize, stood shoving each other playfully and talking about how thrilled each would be if the other won. "The brutal fact is, I'm not going to win, " Josh said. He was correct: The prize went, as expected, to Denis Johnson for his Vietnam novel 'Tree Of Smoke.' But Josh quite possibly won the prize for "Having and Being the Most Fun at the Pre-Party."

Timothy Ferriss—remember, the bestselling gimmick-book author who "gets most of his news by asking waiters"— has become a guru to tech geeks by preaching the counterintuitive gospel of abstention from electronic gadgets and email as a route to a shorter workweek. Now he's dishing blogstyle about how to save time in your social life, too! He advocates "test-driving" your new friendships and romantic relationships by doing some "behavioral cross-referencing": basically, acting like a total asshole and seeing how much your new pals are willing to put up with.

Oprah has selected British author Ken Follett's cathedral-building and hott medieval sex themed 1989 bestseller 'The Pillars Of The Earth' as her next book club pick! Guess she likes the word "cunny" too. [Galleycat]

Judith Regan's not an anti-semite: She's an Italophobe! As the full 70-page text of her $100 million lawsuit against HarperCollins and News Corp. reveals, Judy herself is the victim of a "smear campaign." Remember those awful claims that Ms. Regan, upon her post-If I Did It dismissal, made mention of a "Jewish cabal" and "Of all people...the Jews should know about telling the big lie." Why were such malicious falsehoods spread about a lady who's, at worst, only the second most repellent nouveau Judy to have funded fornication with 9/11 charity monies? You guessed it: because of the NewsCorp conspiracy to elect Rudy Giuliani president at all costs!

The National Book Critics Circle blog, called "Critical Mass," is the place we go to get unreasonable and uninformed comment on matters of the day. But now it's reaching new heights of excitement! Blogs Joan Silber, a 2004 National Book Award Finalist: "As it happens, I'm talking to you during the particular week when I'm moving out of a loft in Noho where I've lived for 33 years."

"As a 39-year-old fiction writer, you can imagine how much time I spend fretting about the plight of under 35-year-old fiction writers," 'Homeland' author Sam Lipsyte said in his introduction to last night's '5 Under 35' event, hosted by the National Book Foundation, which will dole out National Book Awards later this week. When the laughter died down, though, Sam backpedaled: "Actually, though, I don't think things are so good for anyone right now—except the few who don't deserve it." Of course, those few were all that any of the assembled crowd of young and young-ish editors wanted to talk about.

What was it like writing the book "Our Dumb World," Onion editor-in-chief Scott Dikkers? "What was it like? Do you know what it's like to bang your head against a concrete wall until you die of a brain hemorrhage? That's similar, I would say, to what it was like to make this atlas. There's really nothing inherently funny about land masses...." [Fishbowlny]

Borders Bookstores will each soon contain two 37-inch TVs to expand advertising opportunities within the stores—just like Jack-in-the-Box! BordersTV, as the platform is called, won't be showing reality programming or soft-core porn, but it sort of feels like that—can no one stay in business selling books without also providing with each purchase lattes, WiFi, pedicures, escalators, plush toys and a backrub? We suspect the phrase "entertainment experience" was used in the making of this concept, which means we hate it by default. [NYT]

"Carrying this book around recently I've caught more than a little flak, not least from my kids, who once thought of me as a literary intellectual ..." writes dissipated wunderkind Jay McInerney in a book called 'How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read.' Maybe Jay's kids are only pretending to have read Jay's books? That is the charitable explanation. [NYT]

'The Orc King' is a New York Times bestseller. Maybe because it has scenes where ogres battle elves and pegasi! Top that, Junot Diaz!

Jodi Della Femina, daughter of legendary adman turned restaurateur Jerry, has sold a (cowritten) novel about class rage in the Hamptons. This is unsurprising because, when her annual Hamptons guidebook 'Jodi's Shortcuts' was first published in 1999, a typical old-monied response was, "That's the sort of thing that people of her background and breeding do to the places they claim to love." In the novel, which will be published by St. Martin's, "the heroine starts a new restaurant in the Hamptons and encounters the ever-present struggle for status, which cause problems when the owner of an upscale food shop in East Hampton decides to sabotage all of her hard work."

Dungeons and Dragons-themed fantasy tome 'The Orc King' is a New York Times bestseller, which means some people at some stores bought many copies. Why'd they do that? Maybe it's because orcs fall in love just like Patrick Moberg and the rest of us. In today's book club selection, orc king Drizzt Do'Urden's lady, the human fighter from the Icewind Dale Catti-Brie, reconciles with her once-paramour, the barbarian Wulfgar. Cue mood music!

'The Orc King,' a Dungeons and Dragons-themed tome, is currently on the Times bestseller list, which may or may not be meaningless. We're venturing into this enchanted realm to find out why.

You can preorder James Frey's third novel 'Bright Shiny Morning' on Amazon for delivery this June 8. Boy, that's a fast turnaround for a September acquisition! Guess it didn't need to be edited much, being so genius and all.

"I know that most publishers and agents don't like to receive unsolicited proposals from un-agented authors," began the non-bcc'd email received today by almost every agent and editor currently working in book publishing. "But I am a new author who is trying to get her first novel published and I am hoping you will give me a chance and take a look at my novel ...My novel is entitled, "To Catch A Master Thief" and it is in the genre of contemporary romance/thriller. It is about the daughter of a master thief named Claire Barnes, who is a master thief herself. Her father is kidnapped by Don Qui Hon, a ruthless Chinese antiques collector, and held prisoner in Beijing when her father steals one of Don Qui Hon's prized Ming Dynasty vases. Don Qui Hon threatens to kill her father in five days, if Claire doesn't bring him the vase in China. With another master thief chasing after the vase for her own designs and Interpol agent Jack Norton chasing after her to use her as bait to catch her father to further his own career, Claire is in a race against time to save her father. As Jack and Claire are forced to work together, the sparks and passion between them fly, and so does the danger. In the end, Jack will have to decide on whether he wants to advance his career or lose the woman he loves." Oh, well in that case!

Being a Brooklyn Writer turns out to be exactly how you imagine it to be, if debut novelist Porochista Khakpour's Facebook status update is to be believed.

Good news for books! John Grisham's "Playing For Pizza"—the story of a washed-up American quarterback whose trip to Italy to play for the Parma Panthers leads to hijinx—is no longer #1 on the Times hardcover bestseller list. Bad news for books: "Playing for Pizza" is now at #3, bumped by a new Patricia Cornwell novel with "dead" in the title and a "paranormal romance" called "A Lick [hmm!] Of Frost." More distressingly, "The Orc King"—the story of a dark elf named Drizzt Do'Urden—is all the way down to #17. Of course, the list "is not a completely accurate barometer of what the reading public is buying," so phew.