Fiction: November 2007 Archives

Before I was even halfway into the book, I knew I wanted to see Chris Elliott's Into Hot Air: Mounting Mount Everest (Weinstein Books, 342 pages, $23.95) made into a movie.

Funnyman Elliott made a name for himself hiding under the stairs on David Letterman's "Late Show," and then as a 30-year-old paperboy who still lives with his parents in the vastly underrated and underseen sitcom "Get a Life."

Now he's gone and written another "novel." His first, The Shroud of the Thwacker (2005), was a parody of historical crime fiction. Into Hot Air sends up survival stories (like Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air), disaster movies, celebrity activism and reality TV...

Have you ever been mistaken for a celebrity all your life and then had the chance to meet that celebrity face to face?

No? OK, i'ts never happened to me, either, but it happens to Ray Johnston in Steve Carlson's intriguing novel, Almost Graceland (St. Martin's, 263 pages, $23.95)...