Memoir Armoire

When Crown Publishing inked a deal with George W. Bush for his memoirs, the publisher knew it wasn’t getting Faulkner. But the book, at least, promises “gripping, never-before-heard detail” about the former president’s key decisions, offering to bring readers “aboard Air Force One on 9/11, in the hours after America’s most devastating attack since Pearl Harbor; at the head of the table in the Situation Room in the moments before launching the war in Iraq,” and other undisclosed and weighty locations. Crown also got a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections.

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George Bush Book ‘Decision Points’ Lifted From Advisers’ Books

…And the press, and other books…

Lying worked for him in office, so I guess maybe he thought why stop now.

The memoir of a former Boston prison librarian has revealed some of the literary preferences of American inmates. And according to Avi Steinberg, aka “Bookie” to the inmates of Suffolk County House of Correction, popular requests are The Diary of Anne Frank, Robert Greene’s Machiavellian self-help manual The 48 Laws of Power, and anything by Sylvia Plath.

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Memoir reveals prisoners’ book preferences

This sounds like an interesting book. I haven’t read it, but Erwin James is quoted in the piece, and his first prison memoir, A Life Inside, is wonderful.

If you’ve got time to spare, money to burn, and an desire to read Jay-Z‘s memoir Decoded before its release date, join the new Bing.com sponsored advertising campaign. Specific pages of Jay-Z’s memoir will be available at different locations. Fans can join the scavenger hunt and locate these pages using the Bing.com/Jay-Z site. There are prizes as well. Players who discover the pages first can win signed copies of Decoded. The grand prize is a trip to Las Vegas to see Jay-Z and Coldplay play a New Year’s Eve in concert.

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GalleyCat

I guess the prize would be worth having for a big fan, and it’s definitely a different way to promote a memoir, but I certainly couldn’t be bothered to chase around town searching for Jay-Z’s words of wisdom. If it was Beyonce, that would be a different matter.

A new book is out from Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist. The title is Confessions of an Exorcist. It’s in paperback, and … in French. This is a bummer; but I hope it’s only a temporary bummer. (Of course it’s in Italian as well, titled Memoirs of an Exorcist.)

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Gabriele Amorth publishes his ‘Confessions’

So this sounds… Different.

He would have been a difficult interview,” says Baksi, on the line from his home in Stockholm. “He didn’t want to be a pop star, so he wouldn’t have wanted to do interviews on a big television channel like CNN. He would have preferred to do interviews with small, leftist magazines.” Baksi, a writer and publisher in his own right, has recorded his impressions in Stieg Larsson, My Friend, an insightful memoir that focuses mainly on Larsson’s early career as a crusading journalist. “It was a kind of therapy for me,” says Baksi of his motivation for writing the book. “Also, if the situation was reversed and I had sold three books and died, then Stieg probably would have written a book about me.

—Memoir lets Stieg Larsson’s friend move on with life - thestar.com