In a development that should infuriate all midlisters starving and shivering in hovels right now, the Book Standard is now reporting that Barbara Walters walked away from a $6 million advance on her memoir. Walters was in a contract with Miramax Books, only to ditch the contract in question. Now she’s shopping around for a sum closer to Alan Greenspan’s $8.5 million advance. Of course, seeing as how Greenspan’s advance was contingent upon writing about some kinky moments with Ayn Rand, it remains to be seen what Walters could possibly pen to top Greenspan. Unless, of course, the two memoirs were to become illicitly involved, eventually morphing into one extremely salacious memoir to hit the stores later in the year.

Margaret Atwood’s Hay Journal: “Due to bureaucratic foot-dragging, things weren’t quite finished. The parking lot was a bog of squelchy red mud, the consistency my cholesterol-thickened bloodstream would be, I feared, after the binge of cheese-gobbling, double-cream feasting, and sheep’s milk ice-cream I knew I would shortly not be able to resist. Grimly smiling Welshmen were vacuuming up the standing water with giant water-sucking machines, while others spread woodchips wherever possible, singing mournful Welsh woodchip-spreading songs.”