BUZZ BOOKS

Making you an omelet you can’t refuse

The Book Soup alcove was, for lack of a better term, mobbed during a recent signing of Allen Rucker’s “The Sopranos Family Cookbook.”

That’s what you get when you have a hit on your hands. Cheekily written, with advice penned in the voices of the

HBO series’ characters, the book has been Amazon.com’s top seller.

The West Hollywood affair drew celebrities -- including Fred Willard and Ben Stein, and directors Amy Heckerling and John Patterson, who directed the recent fourth-season finale of “The Sopranos” -- but was otherwise crowded with fans, friends and family who drowned out the canned Christmas music with their loud chat and laughter.

In fact, with its spread of wine, nuts, cheese, crackers and fruit, the event was less a reading than a cocktail party. As one attendee deadpanned, “How do you read a cookbook? You need a stove.”

There was, however, no stove, just stacks and stacks of books, which were selling like gelato on a hot summer day in Sicily. One customer bought six. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel bought three: one for his mom, another for his Aunt Fran and a third for himself.

“I grill,” said Kimmel, whose new late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” premieres next month on ABC. “And I cook all the Italian foods -- SpaghettiOs, RavioliOs.”

As a whole, the event had all the spirit of an Italian family gathering, if not the pedigree. Rucker, after all, is not from Italy. Nor was the freely flowing Chardonnay. That was from Sonoma.

-- Susan Carpenter