Diary

A CBS producer accused of blackmailing David Letterman used pages from a former assistant’s diary that described an affair with the “Late Night’’ host, a law enforcement official confirmed yesterday. Stephanie Birkitt , 34, works on the show and lived in Norwalk, Conn., with Robert Halderman until August. Halderman copied parts of Birkitt’s diary and tried to use it as blackmail fodder, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Halderman pleaded not guilty last week to attempted first-degree grand larceny in the $2 million plot.

New York magazine asked actress-writer Mindy Kaling to keep a diary during upfronts, the annual meeting of TV execs to roll out the networks' new season of shows. We learn that Kaling returned to her childhood home in Cambridge while she waited to hear if her show, "The Mindy Project," made Fox's fall lineup. "Going through my bedroom and find some great relics from junior high, like a Denis Leary ‘No Cure for Cancer' tape, but nothing to play it on," she writes. Later, she went to a matinee of "The Avengers.

BRIDGEVILLE, Pa. - George Sodini seethed with anger and frustration toward women. He couldn’t understand why they ignored him, despite his best efforts to look nice. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn’t slept with a woman in 19 years. “Women just don’t like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one,’’ the 48-year-old computer programmer lamented in a chilling diary he posted on the Internet. For months, he also wrote vaguely about using guns to carry out his “exit plan’’ at his health club, where lots of young...

Anybody with a pile of old love letters left crumbling up in the attic should feel a twinge of compassion for President Obama. A new book that is supposed to reveal the real Barack, does it by unveiling the diaries, letters, and memories of the president's old girlfriends. Old means really old, from Obama's days as a 22-year-old student at Columbia University. Obama's ex-girlfriends kept written documentation of their relationships, which they shared with author David Maraniss.

Blows to the head are delivered with more subtlety than the message of "Diary of a Mad Black Woman. " But the movie seems intended as a blunt instrument, so its lack of finesse is very much the point: Certain women (and you know who you are) need a wake-up call to free them from the grip of a dead relationship. "Diary" is part broad comedy, part domestic drama, part extended R&B slowjam, and total audience-tickler, with a lot of church and even more soap opera thrown in. It leaves no mood unswung as it shares with us the feel-bad-then-feel-really-good story of Helen McCarter, whom Kimberly Elise...

Diary of a Married Call Girl , By Tracy Quan, Three Rivers, 318 pp., paperback, $12.95 This is the second installment by Tracy Quan in the continuing adventures of Nancy Chan, upscale Manhattan escort. She's still working the streets and five-star hotels of the city, except now there's a twist: She's married. "Diary of a Married Call Girl" is mostly what it claims to be. Yes, it's got plenty of sex. Yes, it's irreverent. Yes, it's a new perspective on infidelity and modern marriage.

VATICAN CITY -- A cardinal has broken his vow of secrecy and released his diary describing the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, revealing in an exceedingly rare account that a cardinal from Argentina was the main challenger and almost blocked Benedict's election. Excerpts of the diary, published yesterday, show Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger led in each of the four ballots cast in the Sistine Chapel during the mystery-shrouded April 18-19 conclave. But, in a surprise, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit, was in second place the whole time.

What if, when you stuck your hand into the pocket of a new pair of brand-name jeans, you pulled out a letter from one of the exploited workers who had slaved and sweated over your denim? Would you be surprised if the writer acted more curious than angry? Would you chuckle when she wondered why you need such tall, wide pants? That's the experience of watching "China Blue," Micha X. Peled's revealing documentary about life inside a south China factory where peasants with few options come to find jobs, worldliness, and sometimes even love while working around the clock for pennies a day....

A book really wasn't on Brad Paisley's bucket list. Too many songs to write and licks to play. Over time, though, the country music star learned that having millions of fans means millions of questions, and a book offered a way to let everyone know the important people, moments and lessons he's learned since his grandfather gave him his first guitar. "And now I get to say, 'It's in the book,' and that's fun for me," Paisley said. "As well as the fact that this was meant to inspire.

Gone With the Windsors By Laurie GrahamHarperCollins, 403 pp., $24.95 Walking in Circles Before Lying Down By Merrill MarkoeVillard, 270 pp, $22.95 Happiness Sold Separately By Lolly WinstonWarner, 304 pp., $21.99 Somehow August, of all months, calls for a little light reading, but these ingenious novels would be enjoyable in any season. Laurie Graham provides a sharply funny "insider" account of Wallis Simpson's tireless campaign to capture the Prince of Wales, the man who was, briefly, King...

I come up with my best material sitting on a couch at night with a blanket over my head. Trouble is, I fall asleep 80 percent of the time. Jeff Kinney / Plainville-based author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, on Twitter @wimpykid

Plainville author Jeff Kinney will release the seventh installment of his "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series on Nov. 13 through Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. The book will be released all over the world the very next day. Kinney was at the Bologna Children's Book Fair on Wednesday to announce the big news, and he was nice enough to call us Wednesday evening - at about 11 p.m. Italy time. Kinney said this is his first time at the Italian book fair, and that he took the trip to get a sense of his international success.

(Isabel Leon / City of Boston) The author and city's mayor read to children Friday. The mayor broke a toe on his left foot in late February and is required to wear a protective boot for several weeks. Boston.com Staff At the Kilmer K-8 School in West Roxbury, the author of the "Diary of A Wimpy Kid" series, Jeff Kinney, was joined by Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino as they each read excerpts from Kinney's "Wimpy Kid" books to two third grade classrooms Friday morning as part of a ReadBoston "Reading is Fundamental"...

In grade school, there was no girl prettier than Lynne Goodman. However, Nancy Blake was so lovely. Who should be my valentine? Who was I kidding? Neither of those two knockouts would ever clutch any valentine I sent them. Fortunately for me, our teacher had devised something similar to the rules of youth baseball teams today, where everyone gets to play; even the youngster who falls down just getting off the bench when the coach calls, "Hey, Weinstein, get out there!" I meant, when the coach calls that person to get out there.

WGBH this week taped the first celebrity edition of "High School Quiz Show," featuring such local luminaries as "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" author Jeff Kinney, Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, Globe film critic Wesley Morris, meteorologist Mish Michaels, KISS 108's Matt Siegel, humorist Jimmy Tingle, restaurateur Joanne Chang, and Susan Wornick of WCVB-TV. Hosted by "TV Diner" don Billy Costa, the show will air May 20.

CLIVE, Iowa - Just two days into the new year, the Republican presidential contenders yesterday all but wrapped up their Iowa campaigns in advance of tonight's caucuses. Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann pounded their target precincts in a final day of campaigning that stretched from the Mississippi River in the east to the Nebraska and South Dakota borders in the west. The seventh candidate, Jon Huntsman, stayed away entirely, staking his candidacy on a strong...

When I got this book, I wondered how Francine Prose would untangle the provenance and legacy of this famous book - “The Diary of a Young Girl’’ by Anne Frank. Its hold on us has inspired John Berryman, Philip Roth, Judith Thurman, Cynthia Ozick among others, and engendered adaptations for stage and screen. Everyone seems to want to have the last word on this beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed Jewish girl whose mischievous, intelligent face adorns the cover and whose photograph has become an icon of the Holocaust.

AMSTERDAM — Nearly all of Anne Frank’s diary went on display yesterday for the first time at the house where she wrote it during the two years the Jewish teenager was in hiding from the Nazis. The notebooks and pages that make up the World War II diary have been moved into the Anne Frank House museum to mark 50 years since it opened its doors to the public. Dutch Queen Beatrix opened the exhibition, then attended a commemoration at the 17th-century Western Church a few dozen steps from the museum.

BOONE, Iowa - Rick Perry's once-promising presidential campaign is teetering on the verge of collapse, with the candidate initially pegged as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney now trying to dislodge Rick Santorum so he can gain a third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. The Texas governor took dead aim at Santorum yesterday with a values-focused speech at The Gigglin' Goat, an events hall in this one-time railroad town that is the birthplace of former first lady Mamie Eisenhower.

DES MOINES - In August, Michele Bachmann was an Iowa golden girl. Her conservatism and blunt criticism of President Obama made her a favorite of the Tea Party movement in particular. That support was evident when she placed first in the quadrennial Iowa Straw Poll. But the same day she won, Texas Governor Rick Perry joined the Minnesota congresswoman in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. His temporary rise coincided with her permanent fall in the polls, and she has struggled to reclaim the...