During the weekend I was in a bookstore looking through Puzo's book collecion and I picked up The Last Don to thumb through it a bit and noticed that the last few pages of the book are an in-depth description of how the publisher chose Mark Winegardner to write The Godfather Returns.

Jonathan Karp, I think his name was, wanted Puzo to write the sequel himself a few years before he died, but Puzo knew better -- he knew he'd never be able to come close to the original. So he said that the publisher could make a sequel after his death, so sure enough, they did. Karp sounded very excited about the book. He even edited it.

He said time and time again that he didn't want it to be some cheap knock-off or copycat version of the original. He wanted it to have a life of its own, be its own book. It sounded good on paper.

If you're in a book store soon, check it out. A good read now that we've read the book and understand what a ginormous turd it was.