Book News, In Brief

How true to life (i.e. scandalicious) is Britney Spears' mom's book going to be? Not very, judging from that soft focus book cover. For a more fitting distillation of the book's themes, click the image to the left.

Last week, disappointed readers of Breaking Dawn (are there any other kind?) were calling for a book burning. This week they're rallying behind a new plan: returning the books for full refunds. Ha! Go back to burning 'em, suckers. Caveat emptor, and all that.

Booksellers get labeled as nerds, sure, but we've got it a hell of a lot better than our brethren, the comic bookseller. Their public ridicule knows no bounds. Here's a link to a website dissing a comic book shop owner simply because he gave the new Astonishing X-Men a negative review. Although the comments section seems to side with the dissing, the piece raised a couple of question in my mind: Should negative reviews be nixed from a shopkeeper's spiels? Are they bad for business, or do they help to build a buyer's trust?

(Editor's Note: The fact that we've called our patrons suckers in one news item, only to then ponder customer loyalty in the next was not unintentional. To quote Full Metal Jacket, we're only "trying to suggest something about the duality of man...the Jungian thing.")