mySimon Books Shopping Picks

If you grew up with Pat the Bunny (or read it to your kids), you'll appreciate this new parody book called Pat the Husband. The book is just as interactive as the classic: You can remove the Velcro pants from the husband and put them on the wife, pull a tab to make the husband nod his head in agreement, and more. Wrap this one up with the Porn for Women 2009 calendar.

Spotted: Breaking Dawn, the much-hyped final book in Stephenie Meyer's bestselling Twilight saga, in the hands of thousands of women and girls dying to know if Bella will marry Edward and finally and permanently join the Cullen family. If you like stories about vampires, werewolves, and high school love, check out this series. Or be lazy like us and wait for the movie versions. Twilight hits theaters December 12th.

We're a little surprised to learn about a new book called Embracing Your Big Fat Ass: An Owner's Manual. Isn't that Kim Kardashian's entire raison d'etre? Has the world forgotten Sir Mix-a-Lot? But we guess there's still a market for a "gleefully frank" self-help book that "encourages readers to accept and love every inch of themselves - including the lumpier parts." We can't wait for the movie version.

David Sedaris, the author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, has a new book out called When You Are Engulfed in Flames. The book is a collection of personal essays, many of which have already been published in The New Yorker, about everything from youth to travel to quitting smoking. The New York Observer says "The essays are careful accretions of detail and incident that build to some kind of payoff, perhaps a laugh, perhaps a jolt of identification. The Sedaris genius is to be incredibly particular, not to mention peculiar, and yet take fantastic and rapid leaps to the universal."

You can get dirt on celebrities and laugh at their misfortunes on TMZ. But for a little more insight pick up Barbara Walters' memoir, Audition, in which the award-winning TV journalist talks about her career, her family, her marriages (and affairs), and the rich/famous/powerful people who have played significant roles in her life. From Angelina Jolie to Monika Lewinsky, Fidel Castro to the Dalai Lama, there's something for everyone in this book.

Randy Pausch, a professor a Carnegie Mellon University, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. So when, like many healthy professors, he was asked to give a "last lecture" focusing on the things that meant the most to him, his talk was "so moving, so positive in the face of things beyond his control, that the video became an Internet sensation." Read it for yourself. The Last Lecture is about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). Watch the lecture online.

The Wire is over. Now what? Here's what: Generation Kill. In 2003 a Rolling Stone reporter named Evan Wright embedded himself with US Marines in Iraq and wrote a book about it called Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War. Publisher's Weekly called it "a personality-driven, readable and insightful look at the Iraq War's first month from the Marine grunt's point of view." In July, a 7-hour miniseries based on the book, co-written and co-produced by The Wire's David Simon and Ed Burns, will air on HBO. The book won't entertain you until July, but it's a start.

"Girls Don't Make Passes at Boys with Fat A**es." That's just one of the chapters in Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me, a collection of hilarious life lessons from some of our favorite writers and comedians, including Dan Savage, Stephen Colbert, Patton Oswalt, and Nick Hornby. Edited by Ben Karlin, a former executive producer of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and former senior editor of The Onion, Things I've Learned is more comedy than self-help, but you just might learn something from it anyway.

One of our favorite guilty-pleasure blogs is Go Fug Yourself (because "fugly is the new pretty"), where Heather and Jessica call out celebrities for looking ridiculous or worse. From Britney's "letters" to Paris' "diary entries," from Celebrity Terror Watches to Tom Cruise's Flowbie, it's celebrity schadenfreude at its hilarious best. And next week - on Super Tuesday! - the Fug Girls have a book coming out. It's called Go Fug Yourself: The Fug Awards. We can't wait.

The best show on TV - The Wire - starts its final season Sunday night on HBO. (We're offering lots of free babysitting to our friends with on-demand cable this month.) Complement your TV viewing with Felicia "Snoop" Pearson's memoirs, Grace After Midnight. Before she was discovered by the actor who plays Omar, Snoop was born a 3-pound crack baby in East Baltimore and lived a life of drugs and violence, eventually serving a prison term for killing a woman in self-defense. Publisher's Weekly says "Pearson's narrative is spare, even poetic, rendering traumatic moments all the more powerful."

Home for the holidays? Losing your mind? This book might make you feel a little better. 50 Relatives Worse Than Yours illustrates and describes all kinds of irritating and embarrassing family members, from the Force Feeder to the Cheek Pincher, Grandpa Speedo to the Family Newsletter Publisher. Even if you recognize a few relatives, the book will still make you laugh out loud, and hopefully make you look forward to the holidays next year.

Oprah's Book Club is reading The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. It's the story of Philip, "a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known...of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect-a man divided in his soul...of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame...and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state, and brother against brother." Previous Oprah picks.

Dude. Slash wrote a book. OK, so he had some help from Anthony Bozza, who helped Tommy Lee with Tommyland. But still. The book is a sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll memoir of "how (Guns N' Roses) came together, how they wrote the music that defined an era, how they survived insane, never-ending tours, how they survived themselves, and, ultimately, how it all fell apart." Entertainment Weekly says "too much time is spent reliving the days of getting high and crashing through plate-glass windows," but that just makes us want to read it even more.

Oprah calls Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, which she just picked for her Book Club, "one of the greatest love stories I have ever read." And the plot sounds like something you'd hear about on Oprah's talk show. A young man and woman fall madly in love. She marries someone else, while he waits more than 50 years (during which time he has 622 romantic liaisons) to get her back. More books by Gabriel García Márquez.

Ladies, what gets you hot? How about a sexy guy (literally) doing your laundry and asking how you like your shirts folded? Or gorgeous men asking for directions? If you're nodding your heads, then you need this book. Based on research done by the Cambridge Women's Pornography Cooperative, who asked all kinds of women, "What really, really gets you hot?", Porn for Women is a hilarious fantasy world where delicious dinners await and flatulence is just not that funny. We're buying copies for all our female friends and relatives.

Bill Clinton has a new book out about how you can change the world (and it's not about electing his wife President). Entitled Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, the book is loaded with inspiring stories of private citizens and non-governmental organizations who have made a positive impact on the world around them. Clinton says "Almost everyone -- regardless of income, available time, age, and skills -- can do something useful for others and, in the process, strengthen the fabric of our shared humanity." Newsday calls the book "a powerful, inspirational guide that shows how everyday citizens can become part of... a growing network of generosity."

Coming soon from Bloomsbury: I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski: Life, the Big Lebowski, and What Have You, the ultimate fan's guide to the Coen Brothers' cult classic. With an introduction by the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, the book is loaded with trivia, commentary, interviews with all the cast members, Lebowski Fest highlights, and dozens of photos taken on the set by Jeff Bridges. We're looking forward to the guide to speaking Achiever and the tips on how to Dude-ify your car. Shop here for The Big Lebowski t-shirts.

If you liked The Kite Runner, the story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Afghanistan, by Khaled Hosseini, you'll love A Thousand Splendid Suns, the author's latest novel. The book chronicles 30 years of Afghan history as it tells the story of 2 women, born a generation apart, who are brought together by war, forming a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other. The Washington Post says, "just in case you're wondering whether in (their reviewer's) judgment it's as good as The Kite Runner, here's the answer: No. It's better."

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974." So begins Middlesex, the riveting story of a hermaphrodite named Calliope Stephanides, written by the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides. Middlesex won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and is Oprah's latest selection for her book club. More Oprah picks.