Talking of books, do people on this site know about this great site where you can swap books you've done with for ones you do want? I get a large percentage of my books on there.

http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/TheLibrary.aspx

Regarding the tragic life story section, I suppose these trends come and go in publishing. I wouldn't read one but I there must be people that read nothing but. It's a shame if other genres are getting pushed out though.

Yes... titles like "Forgotten Angel", the harrowing tale of a sweet little deaf and dumb girl brought up by voles in a forest because her crack-addicted parents were too busy watching Jeremy Kyle every day to care for her.

I went into a Waterstone's bookshop the other day, and saw that the shelves were groaning under the weight of those "my life was / is crap" books. I mean, why don't we all write one? Everyone I know has had something terrible happen to them. Now where's my quill?

Chapter One....

Is that real?

read Andrew Collins' Where Did It All Go Right? As cheerful a memoir as you could wish for.

Is that Victoria Beckham on the second row from the bottom? I realise she's probably not responsible for the way in which her book is displayed, but a tragic life? I mean, that track with Dane Bowers wasn't well-received, but apart from that she seems to have done OK.

when you've got a decent book contract, respectable sales and a (hopefully) large part of the population saying "yes, isn't life tragic? How wonderful they could overcome the agony of their ingrown toenails." Any chance we can have autobiographies that are actually fun to read?

Although for the rich and famous to convince that it isn't all easy, while still maintaining the burden of wealth and fame... it's a tribute to their publicists.

Justifiably cynical lot, aren't we?

the flagrant mis-use of the word Tragic.

I remember a period after the Manics' Richey James disappeared when teenagers suddenly wrote hundreds of increasingly desperate letters to the Melody Maker, describing how extraordinarily terrible their life was and how Richey had been a figurehead for them. Each letter tried to outdo those that came before it: extreme disability, acute allergies, multiple bereavements, etc, all described in melodramatic detail. Many were probably genuine, masses of them must have been grossly exaggerated, some surely were pure fiction. Unfortunately it became a suburban teenager's version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, and it was unintentionally hilarious.

I was an assistant manager for Waterstone's when these books first became huge hits, on the coat-tails of Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It. We were discussing what to write on the header we were going to put at the top of our small display case of these books (there called 'dumpbins' if you want to practise your jargon).
My suggestion - 'Boo-Fucking-Hoo' - was generally regarded as insufficiently sympathetic, and in retrospect that may be the point when I realised that I had fallen out of love with the book trade.

...before they treat their other sections with similar candour and we find the Jackie Collins filed under "S&F" (shopping and fucking). That picture makes you wonder how they refer to the section next door which appears to contain the Andy McNab books.

That they're turning these shelves into a movie.

Dead pop stars by people who never knew them