A woman who's admitted to having read only two books in her life — Twilight and Dear John — is officially a published author. After months of both anticipation and scorn, the debut novel from Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, the diminutive star of MTV's "Jersey Shore," finally hits bookstore shelves today. Ever since some choice lines from A Shore Thing — "A fart slipped out. A loud one. And stinky" — were published earlier this week, commentators have been cracking wise. As Brian Moylan at Gawker opined, "Snooks always knows how to keep it Klassy with a capital K." Here, a sampling of other stunned reactions:
Deftly unoriginal
"A Shore Thing follows the beach adventures of 'pint-size Gia,' who is described as a 'carefree, outspoken party girl' living in N.J. Must have taken them milliseconds to come up with that plot," says Kristy Stevens-Young at Examiner.com.
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Shame and prejudice
"I'm sure Jane Austen would have written about slurping shots out of a juicehead's belly button if she were around today," says Kelsea Stahler at Hollywood.com.
In good company
"Faulkner, Hemingway and Fitzgerald may be widely acknowledged as America's preeminent literary talents, but none of them have gotten down with The Situation in a hot tub," says Sarah Crow at PopEater.
All by herself
"We had anticipated a ghost writer to step in and at least format a few sentences for her, but looks like this book was all Snook's," says Sophie Schillaci at Zap2It. "Just as it should be."
Spellcheck
"We wouldn't be surprised at all to hear Snooki utter these words during her book tour: 'Before 'Jersey Shore' came along, I didn't even know how to spell author and, lookit, now I are one!'" says Celia Rivenbark at The Sun News.
A whole new world
"If you want to join the new author on her first-ever visit to the foreign world of the bookstore, make sure you catch her at a book signing," says Nate Freeman at The New York Observer.
