Sharon Stone's mystery bath ingredient is tame compared to dismembered starlets

The truth hurts. Except when you're talking about a heap of new non-fiction books. Content this week at Bookgasm sure leaned that way, though purely without intention. Sometimes these things just work out like that, and by "that" I mean these (as always, click the links to read the full reviews):

• THE DEVIL’S GUIDE TO HOLLYWOOD: THE SCREENWRITER AS GOD by Joe Eszterhas – "Joe Eszterhas is kind of a prick. But you probably already knew that. The shaggy screenwriter behind (as we are told many, many times) hits like BASIC INSTINCT and FLASHDANCE – as well as not-so-hitty films like SHOWGIRLS and BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN: AN ALAN SMITHEE FILM – has written a book that is supposed to be about screenwriting, but instead, is nothing more than one big slamfest comprised entirely of quotes from other people or short anecdotes about disgruntled crew members pissing in Sharon Stone's bathwater."

• EXQUISITE CORPSE: SURREALISM AND THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER by Mark Nelson and Sarah Hudson Bayliss – "includes several actual crime-scene photographs, which – even decades removed – prove mega-disturbing. To see a book double as a true-crime tale and an art-history essay is jarring, but in a good way; it's definitely a take I've not seen before. The fact that it's presented in the coffee-table format both speaks to the true artistic nature of the subject as well as a streak of bad taste. Let's just say if you showcase this title on your furniture, you might be busy wiping up a lot of spilt Sanka and regurgitated breakfasts."

• THE DOG DIALED 911: A BOOK OF LISTS FROM THE SMOKING GUN – "a just-what-it-says collection of legal documents, police reports and other Freedom-of-Information-Act periphery culled from their popular, Court TV-owned site, organized into subject-specific chapters dealing with sex, drugs and Bill O'Reilly, and given fun-loving titles like '2 Tom Cruise Proclamations of Heterosexuality' and '82 Magazines to Which Our Brave Soldiers Will Never Masturbate.'"

Next week, we promise to get more fictional, though in these last few days we also devoted virtual ink to a crime tale with a bad fish pun in the title, the second ROGUE ANGEL adventure, a requisite horror anthology for Halloween and a slew of old Westerns (most of which sucked). It's Friday, so what better thing do you have to do? Work schmerk.