mySimon Entertainment Shopping Picks

Ladies, what gets you hot? How about a sexy guy (literally) doing your laundry and asking how you like your shirts folded? Or gorgeous men asking for directions? If you're nodding your heads, then you need this book. Based on research done by the Cambridge Women's Pornography Cooperative, who asked all kinds of women, "What really, really gets you hot?", Porn for Women is a hilarious fantasy world where delicious dinners await and flatulence is just not that funny. We're buying copies for all our female friends and relatives.

Bill Clinton has a new book out about how you can change the world (and it's not about electing his wife President). Entitled Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, the book is loaded with inspiring stories of private citizens and non-governmental organizations who have made a positive impact on the world around them. Clinton says "Almost everyone -- regardless of income, available time, age, and skills -- can do something useful for others and, in the process, strengthen the fabric of our shared humanity." Newsday calls the book "a powerful, inspirational guide that shows how everyday citizens can become part of... a growing network of generosity."

The first season of Ugly Betty, for which America Ferrera won a 2006 Golden Globe Award, comes out on DVD this week. Ferrera's character, Betty Suarez, sticks out like a sore thumb in her job as a fashion editor's assistant. We're pretty sure Betty wouldn't last 2 minutes working for Anna Wintour, but this is (highly entertaining) fiction. The DVD set contains all 23 episodes of the first season, on 6 DVDs, as well as a full complement of original featurettes, deleted scenes, audio commentaries, bloopers, and a Spanish audio track. Hey ABC, where are the Ugly Betty action figures??

The new Simpsons movie is only 87 minutes long. If that's not enough to keep you entertained this weekend, pick up The Simpsons - Season 10, now out on DVD. The 4-disc set contains all 24 episodes from the 1998-1999 season, including "Treehouse of Horror IX," "Simpsons Bible Stories," and "Viva Ned Flanders," with guest stars ranging from Alec Baldwin to Stephen Hawking. DVD extras include alternate and deleted scenes, bonus shorts, featurettes, and a sketch gallery. More Simpsons on DVD.

Coming soon from Bloomsbury: I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski: Life, the Big Lebowski, and What Have You, the ultimate fan's guide to the Coen Brothers' cult classic. With an introduction by the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, the book is loaded with trivia, commentary, interviews with all the cast members, Lebowski Fest highlights, and dozens of photos taken on the set by Jeff Bridges. We're looking forward to the guide to speaking Achiever and the tips on how to Dude-ify your car. Shop here for The Big Lebowski t-shirts.

If you liked The Kite Runner, the story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Afghanistan, by Khaled Hosseini, you'll love A Thousand Splendid Suns, the author's latest novel. The book chronicles 30 years of Afghan history as it tells the story of 2 women, born a generation apart, who are brought together by war, forming a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other. The Washington Post says, "just in case you're wondering whether in (their reviewer's) judgment it's as good as The Kite Runner, here's the answer: No. It's better."

We're too cheap to pay for HBO, so we're super excited that the third (and final) season of the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning Deadwood comes out on DVD today. This is how we like our history lessons: Vivid, well-acted, and full of murder and mayhem. The DVD set contains 12 hours of entertainment, plus extra featurettes, audio commentary, and a photo gallery of historic Deadwood.

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974." So begins Middlesex, the riveting story of a hermaphrodite named Calliope Stephanides, written by the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides. Middlesex won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and is Oprah's latest selection for her book club. More Oprah picks.

HBO is promoting the June 10 grand finale of The Sopranos with this new book cleverly titled The Sopranos: The Book. Packed with 200 full-color photos and more than 50 interviews with cast, crew, and producers (not to mention an episode guide and food glossary), the book is a must-have for any die-hard Sopranos fan. But we still wish HBO would make Sopranos action figures. More gifts under $50 for Dads and Grads.

Schadenfreude n. Pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune, plenty of which can be found in The Pop-Up Book of Celebrity Meltdowns. This satirical celebration of celebrities gone wild contains 10 spectacular crack-ups, from Tom Cruise jumping Oprah's couch to Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction," with hilarious artwork and some ingenious paper engineering. Also funny: The Pop-Up Book of Phobias.

Oprah Winfrey calls Planet Earth "the most beautiful, wondrous, and truly majestic series - the best thing I've ever seen on TV." Produced by the Discovery Channel and narrated by Sigourney Weaver, this 5-disc, 11-part natural history series covers mountains, oceans, deserts, jungles, ice worlds, and everything in between, with startling views of locations captured by cameras for the first time ever, plus unprecedented high-definition production techniques.

Great news for Lord of the Rings fans: The Children of Hurin, which J.R.R. Tolkien first started writing in 1918, comes out this week, thanks to the efforts of the author's son, Christopher, who spent 30 years pulling together the various published and unpublished pieces. The jacket, paintings, and pencil drawings were done by Allan Lee, who also illustrated The Hobbit. More J.R.R. Tolkien books.

Either Sidney Poitier's autobiography was a quick read, or Oprah's got an ambitious plan for her book club in 2007. Check out her latest pick, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the story of a father and son, survivors of some civilization-ending apocalypse, walking along through America, with nothing to defend themselves but a pistol. We're thinking it's probably not a comedy. Previous Oprah Book Club picks.

Last night we watched the Food Network's "Cookography" of Nigella Lawson, the British beauty, journalist, cooking show host, and writer. Although she's not a trained chef, her approach to cooking (simple, social, and, dare we say, sexy) has earned her a worldwide following. We can't decide if we want to be her or marry her, but we certainly want to eat the food she prepares. Check out Nigella Lawson's cookbooks - and set an extra place at the table for us.

We can think of several reasons people will buy Casino Royale, the most recent James Bond film, which comes out on DVD this week. There's Daniel Craig's powerful performance as Bond, of course, with Dame Judi Dench perfectly cast in the role of M, and a villain who weeps blood. The opening action sequence is well-done as is the Venetian implosion. But for some women we know, it's all about the image shown here.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan comes out on DVD this week. You can wait a month for it to become available on Netflix, or you can buy it now, and find out why Entertainment Weekly calls it a "specimen of satirical brilliance so fearless and liberatingly offensive that it ought to be included in every high school syllabus pertaining to (a) multicultural sensitivity and (b) the craft of socially relevant comedy." Check out these Borat t-shirts.

From Mike Judge, one of the creative minds behind King of the Hill and Office Space, comes Idiocracy, an outrageous sci-fi comedy about a not-so-bright guy who awakens in the year 2505 to find a society so dumbed-down by mass commercialism and mindless TV programming that he's become the smartest guy on the planet. Filled with razor-sharp sarcasm and outrageous sight gags, Idiocracy will make you laugh out loud whether you're an absolute genius - or a complete idiot.

In The Castle in the Forest, the latest novel from literary powerhouse Norman Mailer, Satan assigns the devil Dieter to help watch over the childhood of a young Austrian boy named Adolph Hitler. For who is better suited to tell us about Hitler's childhood than the devil himself? No details are spared, and Dieter watches with pleasure as "Adi" develops a psychosexual obsession with feces, power, violence, and mass-murder. More books by Norman Mailer.

In case you missed the Golden Globe awards, Meryl Streep won the award for best actress in a musical or comedy for her role in The Devil Wears Prada. She thanked her co-stars who, she said, "had the difficult job of making me seem monstrous." Hugh Laurie won the award for best actor in a drama television serious for his role as House, and Grey's Anatomy won the award for best dramatic television series. If there's a Golden Globe award for best-dressed last night, it should go to Ellen Pompeo.

In the so-bad-it's-good department, Snakes on a Plane is now available on DVD. (If you're wondering what the movie's about, you're fired.) The DVD comes with some cool extra features, including 10 deleted scenes, a blooper reel, and a "Snakes on a Blog" fan reel. Invite your friends over to watch it, and play along with the Snakes on a Plane audience participation script (Google it). More Samuel L. Jackson movies.