How I became a famous novelist, by Steve Hely

I grabbed this off the shelf when I read that it was the 2010 winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. It IS funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny like Thurber's The night the bed fell, which gives me the giggles just thinking about it. Pete Tarslow's long-time girlfriend has dumped him; he spends his days writing graduate school admissions essays for struggling foreign-born applicants; life in general is really not working out well. When said girlfriend announces her wedding to a much more successful suitor, Pete hatches the idea to put him to show him up by becoming best-selling author. And he does. In between are send-ups of popular authors; the publishing/media industries; a truly hilarious and dead-on mock of the New York Times bestseller list; and fame in general. It's fun to guess just which popular works are satirized on the bestseller list but this one is a no-brainer: "The Balthazar Tablet, by Tim Drew: The murder of a cardinal leads a Yale professor and an underwear model to the Middle East, where they uncover clues to a conspiracy kept hidden by the Shriners."Underneath it all is the author's real appreciation of literature. 322 pp.