For one more pandering, slackly constructed tear-jerker, Albom celebrates gloopy virtues that you'll find expressed more movingly, pithily, and inexpensively on any Hallmark greeting card.
2. The Way We Were Paul Burrell
A decade after Princess Diana's death — and four years after his acquittal on charges of stealing from her estate — her smarmy butler dishes yet more dirt on ''the Boss.'' Among the questionable new revelations: Diana had a friend's stillborn infant buried in the Kensington Palace garden, never truly loved Dodi Al Fayed (''he was an intense, short-lived fling''), and drank a whole lot of carrot juice.
3. Hannibal Rising Thomas Harris
Hannibal Lecter had a really rotten Eastern European childhood. That's the cop-out explanation for his nasty proclivities that Harris serves up — sans Chianti, fava beans, or even scares — in this stilted and virtually unreadable extension of a once formidable brand.
4. Junior Macaulay Culkin
''I want to make one thing clear before we begin: I am not a writer,'' the young actor asserts in the introduction to his smirky and exceedingly self-indulgent memoir/ rant/novel/doodle ad. No arguments here.
5. Killing Johnny Fry Walter Mosley
It brings no pleasure to list a beloved writer's cringe-inducing and stomach-turning porn extravaganza, but someone must stop the guy. Or persuade him to use a pseudonym next time.
