Monday, January 23, 2006

Bestsellers: James Frey Continues To Reap Sales

Looking at the new bestseller lists, "The Da Vinci Code" is just weeks away from three years on the charts and it's right where it usually is: at Number One. Clearly no one is in the mood for serious reading: every title on the list is an "airport book," light reading that can be forgotten as soon as it's over. On the nonfiction list, the popular memoir genre is represented by at least six titles. But while James Frey (at Number Three with "My Friend Leonard") made up most of his dramatic stories (his new book is about the mobster friend he made while serving time, but of course he never did serve time), the others seem bizarrely truthful. Laci Peterson's mom did lose her daughter to foul play, journalist John Grogan does own a dog, Joan Didion's husband did die, Frank McCourt was a schoolteacher, and Karrine Steffans ("Confessions of a Video Vixen") did appear in a lot of hip-hop videos. How old-fashioned of them.

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