This week in the books section, I review a humor book by someone who's already written a very funny humor book:

Now Rich has returned with Free-Range Chickens and, as with most sophomore outings, Chickens seems a little less shiny than Ant did. There are still some great riffs on clichés, like the bit where Rich imagines going back in time to kill Hitler as a baby:

—Oh my God. You killed a baby.
—Yes, but the baby was Hitler.
—Who?
—Hitler. It's... complicated.
—Officer? This man just killed a baby.

You should go over and read the whole thing, if just for the quote from the book about Dracula on match.com.

This week in the books section, superstar book intern Rayne DeMartini makes her Stranger debut with a review of a collection of poetry by Paul Guest:

The holidays are a time for emotional gluttony. We are all Kafka and Kundera this winter. Yes! Sad season is finally here. I welcome you to the pity party and insist you read Paul Guest's twisted, derisive, sardonic poetry. Why spend any evening alone "processing" when you can curl up with spicy rum and a sexy paraplegic poet who will lull you into remembering that "everything is fucked... our sadness [is] debilitating." In his new poetry collection, Guest delivers what we really crave in winter—the sick truth that there is nothing special about human existence except the ability to endure it, to write your own eulogy and laugh in its filthy face.

Ms. DeMartini's energetic writing style is quite unlike anything the books section has seen in a long time, and I advise you go over and check it out.

This week in the book section, I go over my regrets for 2008. Here are a few:

• Paul Constant regrets reading the following books: How Starbucks Saved My Life, The Film Club, Love Junkie, anything by Leon Uris and Herman Wouk, and just about every mainstream superhero comic book.

• In a piece about science-fiction book awards, Paul Constant claimed that the novel Light, which was released in 2006, was writer M. John Harrison's first novel. Harrison has been writing for four decades; his first novel is older than Paul Constant. Paul Constant doesn't know what the fuck is wrong with Paul Constant.

There's much more, including the books I regret not talking enough about, what I will regret if you don't do in the next two weeks, two brushes with literary idols, and the escalation of a petty feud. I hope you'll check it out.

You were very nearly subject to a mass-media assault (glowing news stories, Oprah-approved bliss, an inevitable movie adaptation) regarding a new memoir, out in February, called An Angel at the Fence. It was a memoir by a man who says he met the love of his life during the Holocaust. Oprah loved the fuck out of this book and was going to no doubt push it to the top of the bestseller lists..

It's a fake.

The publisher of a disputed Holocaust memoir has canceled the book, adding the name Herman Rosenblat to an increasingly long list of literary fakers and ending with a heartbreaking crash his story _ embraced by Oprah Winfrey among others _ of meeting his future wife at a concentration camp.

"I wanted to bring happiness to people," Rosenblat said in a statement issued Saturday through his agent, Andrea Hurst. "I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world."

Rosenblat's "Angel at the Fence" had been scheduled to come out in February, but Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), withdrew the memoir following allegations by scholars, friends and family members that his tale was untrue.

"Berkley Books is canceling publication of `Angel at the Fence' after receiving new information from Herman Rosenblat's agent, Andrea Hurst," the publisher said in a statement. "Berkley will demand that the author and the agent return all money that they have received for this work."

There is an open mic tonight, but no book readings.

Instead, you should read Raymond Carver's story "Why Don't You Dance?" It's one of my all-time favorites of his, and I think a perfect antidote to the belief that some people hold about Carver; once I posted about him and someone in the comments asked something like "Isn't he one of those people that only writing students read?" David Schmader, if I recall correctly responded before I could. His response? "No." Give Carver a shot, if you haven't. There's very little of the modern short story ennui on display in his stories.

The readings calendar is here.