Tattoo Blues
Michael McClelland
“With hot sauce”
Rubber dinosaurs
A lesbian clam pirate.
‘Nuff said. Or is it??…
The Lighthouse, A Certain Justice, Murder Room and Original Sin
P.D. James
About 10 years ago, I picked up a copy of Original Sin at a used booksale because I liked the cover art. Despite schlepping it through about 10 moves, I never actually cracked the cover. Imagine my surprise, and rueful chagrin, when I discovered I really like P.D. …
Crackpot – The Obsessions of John Waters
John Waters
…“Why I Love Christmas”By December I’m deep in Xmas psychosis, and only then do I allow myself the luxury of daydreaming my favorite childhood memory: dashing through the snow, laughing all the way (ha-ha-ha) to Grandma’s house to find that the fully decorated tree has fallen over and
Secret Girl
Molly Bruce Jacobs
Secret Girl is a combined autobiography and biography of Jacobs and her sister Anne. As she and her sister become teenagers, Jacobs’ father tells them that they have another sister, Anne, who was born with water on the brain. The baby, twin to Jacob’s sister Laura, was …
Neil Gaiman in Madison
I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub and Gary Wolfe speak at the Wisconsin Book Festival last weekend. Hot damn, Neil Gaiman rocks in so many ways. The official title of the talk was something on the lines of “The Evolution of Horror and Fantasy: Genre …
Paint it Black: A Guide to Gothic Homemaking – Voltaire
Voltaire
…The Glue Gun: If you have never used a glue gun before, then I am honored to introduce to you a tool that is going to make you Gother than you could ever imagine. Why, you ask? Well, I have been using glue guns for nearly twenty years now
The City of Falling Angels
John Berendt
In Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, the reader has a strong feeling of time. The story covers years and you can clearly feel Capote’s desire to tell the story to the end, but at the same time strongly fearing and wishing for a conclusion. In Berendt’s books, …
High Fidelity
Nick Hornby
You know what is really funny? Dogs, with socks on running. You know what else is funny? I actually read this book years ago and had no memory of it until I got about 7/8 of they way through. Then I realized “Oh, this is that book about …
A Working Stiff’s Manifesto
Iain Levison
Less lighthearted than halliday’s book is A Working Stiff’s Manifesto. While there are definitely some priceless moments (the ceramic donkey), I was more than a bit disturbed by this book. Levison first joined the military to get training in electrical engineering. While he did receive training it …
Job Hopper: The Checkered Career of a Down-Market Dilettante
ayun halliday
It took me over half the book to realize why halliday’s voice was so familiar. I realized, with a start, that I regularly read her column in Bust magazine about her life in NY with small, mouthy children. Job Hopper is definitely pre Inky and Milo (her kids). …
Fargo Rock City and Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
Chuck Klosterman
Klosterman was an excellent recommendation from Mike H. Both titles are semi-autobiographical books about Klosterman’s love of rock and roll/metal, his job as a writer with Spin, his childhood in North Dakota and various and sundry famous and infamous bands. Fargo Rock City is, if anything, a manifesto …
In Praise of Slowness: How the Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed
Carl Honorè
Honorè starts this book by recounting how he came to be interested in writing about time and the Slow movement. While waiting for a plane, he read an article in the paper about a series of new one minute bedtime stories. He gleefully thought to himself how he …
The Rule of Four
Ian Caldwell, Dustin Thomason
I saw this book compared to Da Vinci Code, but I disagree. I enjoyed this one. Yeah, is does have some of the over the top “hidden messages from the past” stuff in it, but on the whole it was a bit more believable (I …
Slow Fat Triathlete
Jayne Williams
Williams describes herself as “nearly asteroid sized and shaped” when she decided to start running. Within two years she was competing in her first triathlon. She freely admits that yes, she is fat and yes, she is slow. But she also competes and has a great time. She …
The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions
Kenji Kawakami
Kawakami is billed as ” the inventor of the concept of Chindogu and the founder of the 10,000-member International Chindogu Society.’ And what, may you ask (and you may) is Chindogu?
Chindogu is the concept of an invention this is almost, but not entirely, useless. True chindogu cannot …
The Beard and Moustache Championships
The Beard and Moustache Championships – The First Official Book (with entry form!)
A short but amusing tome with a collection of photos of past international beard and moustache championship winners. Everything form little clarkie moustaches and van dyke beards, to multi-tentacled freestyle beards and foot wide mutton chop whiskers. …