Celebritology Archive: Reading

Fact or Fiction? Reading the Fine Print on Jackson's Life

(Image courtesy Simon & Shuster) The first posthumous Michael Jackson bio/tell-all has arrived. Ian Halperin's "Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson" was already in the works when Jackson died on June 25, but sensing the smell of money to be made, Halperin's publishers rushed the book -- updated to include details about Jackson's final days -- into production and launched it yesterday. Already, the book is ranked No. 2 on Amazon.com's Bestseller List, behind a Glenn Beck-penned anti-Government manifesto and just ahead of Dan Brown's newest thriller. But why spend your hard-earned ducats on an MJ bio when you can get the most explosive allegations right here? Halperin claims Jackson's greedy circle of employees and so-called friends are responsible for the one-time King of Pop's death. Halperin writes that Jackson was gay and would wear elaborate disguises when meeting one of his eight gay lovers, who he forced...

Reading List: Lynne Spears's Parental Advisory

(Image courtesy Thomas Nelson) Tomorrow Lynne Spears's hotly anticipated book, "Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World," debuts. The buzz preceding this launch hasn't been seen Christopher Ciccone's "Life with My Sister Madonna" landed with a resounding thud in July. Says Spears of her book: "... [this is] the story of one simple Southern woman whose family got caught in a tornado called fame, and who is still trying to sort through the debris scattered all over her life in the aftermath. It's who I am, warts and all, with some true confessions that took a long time to get up the nerve to discuss." Spears's prescient use of storm imagery alone is enough to whet my appetite for the rest of the book. What other metaphors can the showbiz mom of the century employ to illustrate her hardscrabble life? Might we...