Money certainly does not buy you happiness, or so Keanu Reeves's first offering to the literary world would have us believe.
Books: The National Reads
Last Updated: 20 June, 2011 UAE
Book reviews, festivals and all things literary
The guaranteed easy read contains just one line of a poem per page, with equally eyebrow raising ink illustrations by the LA artist Alexandra Grant. Reeves clearly finds writing a cleansing process, describing how he draws a "hot sorrow bath" and uses "regret shampoo…pain soap" and "I hate myself face cream".
But wait, this has to be a joke right? Well yes, sort of. For despite the reputation for gloominess Reeves has acquired in recent years, this book was apparently written to poke fun at his self-pitying friends. Let's hope a disclaimer somehow finds its way inside the hand-stitched cover before legions of Reeves fans buy the book to lift him out of his supposed despair. Fans of unusual celebrity literary projects will also have been delighted by the news last week that the rapper 50 Cent is to write a young-adult novel about bullying called Playground, which will be published in January.
The artist drew upon his own violent childhood to write the novel, about a reformed 13-year-old bully and is keen for it to have a "positive influence on all teenagers". It's not Fiddy's first literary endeavour - in 2007, he launched G-Unit Books, designed to publish a series of novellas and graphic novels about ghetto life, and he co-wrote one of the titles, The Ski-Mask Way.
He has also written a memoir, From Pieces to Weight, and even a self-help guide called The 50th Law, co-written with Robert Greene. It is debatable, however, whether it is wise to take tips from the man whose most famous piece of advice is: "Get rich or die trying." Wise words, Fiddy, wise words.