Melissa Rivers remembers mom in memoir

Yep, Joan Rivers is probably chortling somewhere up in the great Comedy Club in the sky.

Melissa Rivers says she wanted to write a book that would have made her mother laugh. And Joan, who died last September at age 81, and her jokes ripple throughout Melissa's affectionate "memoir," The Book of Joan: Tales of Mirth, Mischief, and Manipulation (Crown Archetype).

Don't turn to The Book of Joan expecting tears, confessions and regrets. This is a lighthearted, feel-good, often raunchy effort that can read like a compendium of Fashion Police and Joan & Melissa one-liners.

Her opening sentence is about as sentimental as Melissa gets: "I never thought I'd be sitting in a hospital making a decision about turning off a ventilator." (Melissa Rivers has filed a malpractice lawsuit against the clinic and doctors who performed a throat procedure on her mother, which no doubt explains her reticence on the topic.)

So what do we learn from The Book of Joan?

• Before she went into show biz, Joan was briefly married to the boss' son at Bond Clothes in Manhattan.

• She had a lifelong obsession with death. When Melissa was a kid, "my mother would read part of an obituary in the paper, and I'd have to guess facts about the deceased."

• From her first-grade report card: "Joan's voice is still loud and she tries to get attention this way."

• "My mother couldn't stand celebrities who complained about the 'burden' of fame."

• Joan, who according to Melissa had 348 plastic surgeries, was never happy with the way she looked, "which fed into her sense of being 'less than.' " She loved fat jokes because she was a fat child.

• Joan was a terrible driver who refused to go over 40 mph, even on the highway. "The five scariest words that ever came out of my mother's mouth were 'Melissa, get in the car.' "

• She knew how to get her way. "The woman was a professional, grade-A, top-of-the-line, best-of-the-best manipulator."

• She felt it was "hurtful and deeply unfair" that Jay Leno kept her off The Tonight Show for more than "20 years for no good reason."

• Joan loved true-crime books and TV shows and read aloud to her daughter from Truman Capote's In Cold Blood when Melissa was in fourth grade.

• Her grandson Cooper, 14, "was the love of her life."