Book Pimping: March
Authors have pimp their books out to bring home the bacon or tofu (depending on whatever culinary persuasion they belong to) so here are some examples of noteworthy book pimping in the media outlets this past month.
Check it.
UNDATEABLE
311 Things Guys Do That Guarantee They Won’t Be Dating or Having Sex
by Ellen Rakieten and Anne Coyle
This little jewel is yet another addition to the already ginormous canon of dating advice books out there. What makes it appealing? The car wreck quality. I can’t decide: it’s cruel, no it’s funny. Yet so mean. But: Can’t. Turn. Away.
See?
Isn’t this fun?
Although I have to say, we can’t keep making books about guys being odd. There has to be some balance. Where are the books about women?
THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE
by Nell Irvin Painter
Nell Irvin Painter on the Colbert Report (click on picture for video)
It seemed unclear to Colbert what the whole idea behind Painter’s book was. Was it an actual history? Nope. Was it a racial history? Nope.
More of an ideological history.
Nell Irvin Painter revealed to Colbert a few things that make people white:
* Having Sex
* Possibly social class
* Jimmy Buffet?
Beyond that. I couldn’t gather much else. But it definitely made me want to read it.
by Raj Patel
Raj Patel, Book Pimp/Possible Messiah (click on picture for video)
Nobody remembers what poor Raj Patel’s book is about, but we do remember that Share International identified him as the Messiah after he appeared on the Colbert Report. Talk about pimping your book…
What does Patel think about his holiness?
“It’s incredibly flattering, just for an instant, and then you realize what it means. People are looking for better times. Almost anything now will qualify as a portent of different times.”
L’AMORE VINCE SEMPRE SULL’INVIDIA E SULL’ODIO
(“Love always wins over envy and hatred”)
by Silvio Berlusconi
The word pimp is becoming in many senses to Berlusconi. 1) politics is quite a whorey business. Let’s just leave it at that; 2) Berlusconi is quite a ladies man. But most of all, he is dedicated to the manufacture and distribution of one product: himself–now in convenient literary form. Right before elections, too.
His new “book” is a collection of emotional replies and pleadings to Berlusconi to ignore the “playa haters,” if you will. Some excerpts:
- “Show them you’re indestructible!”
- “We beg you, don’t abandon us and do clone yourself if you can”
- “On seeing you covered in blood, my wife grabbed her hair and sobbed as she yelled ‘My Madonna, save Silvio!’”
- “Prime Minister, we’re at the edge of a precipice: only you can save us and guarantee a future to our grandchildren. We have prayed for you and will continue to do so every day.”
- “Your mamma in the heavens will protect you and give you the strength and serenity to continue your job.”
- “Without you I’d leave Italy.”
Are they real? Who cares! Silvio Berlusconi and characters like him are one of the reasons I enjoyed Political Science in college so much.
At any rate, elections at the end of March went (more or less) Berlusconi’s way despite the sex scandals and general dissatisfaction with him as PM (not Pimp Master, but Prime Minister). The reason: the opposition’s inability to harness that dissatisfaction and bring it into the mainstream. Thus resulting in a low turnout.
Oh, Berlusconi, you’re a sly one. Keep living it up, book pimp.
