But why not lie? We live in a culture where lying is so pervasive it’s lost its ability to shock. Like the daily body count in Irag now relegated to the second page of the daily paper, lying has become quite ho-hum.

Or is it? Could it be that it’s not our lack of interest but our sense of helplessness that makes us feign disinterest to avoid opening the floodgates to all those harmful stress hormones?

I believe that we all care deeply about all of these issues but in order to survive emotionally, we have learned to pick our battles.

Fortunately enough outraged readers chose to pick Freygate as their battle, forcing Oprah to reverse her stand on the book.

And speaking of memoirs about recovery. Last week PW Daily printed comments by an author who has written an honest accounting of her disease and recovery. I’m only a little way into the book, but it is far more believable than “Pieces” because sensationalism has been kept to a minimum. I’d love to mention the title and the author’s name, but don’t want to hijack Booksquare’s blog.

Lorra Laven