WichiTalk

Early this month, The Eagle introduced readers to Angie Gregory, a 29-year-old attorney for Cargill who was part of the audience for the Oprah show’s "Pay It Forward Challenge." The audience members were each given $1,000 to donate to charity, and were asked to shoot a video diary of their good works.

Angie started by hosting a Halloween party for the pediatric ward at Wesley Medical Center. Since then she’s been busy helping Wichitans in some creative ways. Here’s what Angie had to say, in an e-mail she sent this morning:

Book club fans take note, Oprah’s latest reading selection is holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical novel "Night."

Note the words "autobiographical novel." 

One of Oprah’s previous book club selections, the addiction/recovery memoir "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey, recently was lambasted for containing fictional scenes. Oprah stood by Frey’s book, but ended up with egg on her face.

"Night," Wiesel’s account of his time at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, is marketed by bookstores as a novel, though the author refers to it as a memoir. I remember reading the book in high school. Fiction or fact, it was packed with imagery and emotional resonance that brought me to tears.

Frey’s book, on the other hand, failed to capture my interest. I started reading it twice, but it seemed filled with gratuitous gross-out scenes (lots of fluids pass in and out of Frey’s body), and I never did sympathize with Frey as a narrator. As far as addiction memoirs go, I prefer Augusten Burroughs’ "Dry."

And you, Wichitalk reader? Do you care whether a book is called a memoir or a novel? DO you have different standards for books that are supposed to be true, and those that are fiction?

Check out Slate’s point/counterpoint with Meghan O’Rourke and Seth Mnookin for more thoughts on this topic.

–Posted by Jillian Cohan

The Queen of the Universe, Oprah Winfrey, has just come out with her annual list of favorite things, the majority of which we mere mortals won’t be affording — diamond watch, $105 jar of face cream, you get the idea.

There are a few exceptions, like the $25 box of brownies and the $62 bottle of Sarah Jessica Parker perfume. (Will it smell more like sex or the city? Hmmmm.)

Check out all the goodies here.

– Posted by Denise Neil

We asked you to let us know if you had a Ty Pennington sighting. And several of you kept your eyes peeled for him at local shops, restaurants, hotels, etc., while he and ABC’s "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" have been in the Wichita area this week. Here is Ty:

At the gym

Jennifer Wenzel and her clan snapped a shop of him Monday at Genesis Health Club on Rock. "We had seen him working out, but didn’t bother him. Then, we happened to be getting in the car when he walked out! Very cool!" she wrote.

At Fox and Hound

Amanda Mudloff and her friends were there Monday to watch football. So, she did the natural thing and had her waitress send him over a beer.

"He raised his glass and said ‘Thank you’ from across the room," she wrote. "He was an extremely nice guy. He shook my hand and asked me what my name was. He was there for about three hours with either some of the crew from the show or his friends. They are in the picture as well." And the beer Ty had? "It was a German beer," Amanda wrote. "VERY dark. My tab said, ‘Warst Dunk.’"

At the "Extreme Makeover" site

Shana Holsteen sent this photo, taken on the housing site near Rose Hill. "He is standing with the line crew and contractors of Butler Rural Electric Cooperative," she wrote.

– Posted by Lori O’Toole Buselt

So continue to keep your eyes open. Send us your account and photo, if you snap one, to our Ty Watch at wichitalk@wichitaeagle.com.

Have you seen those totally creepy Burger King commercials with the eerily silent masked guy who stares at people in the forest, shows up in the back seat of their car, etc? They give me the heebie jeebies. Which is why it’s absolutely appropriate that, just in time for Halloween, the burger chain is selling those masks on their web site. And it gets even creepier. That chicken on the left is another odd-ball marketing tool. BK has named her  the "subservient chicken," and she’s pushing BK’s new chicken sandwich by following commands on the web. It must be seen to be believed. Suddenly, I’m too scared to eat.
–Posted by Denise Neil