Non-Fiction: “Bright-Sided” by Barbara Ehrenreich

Okay, I am done (for the time being) with non-fiction. I can’t believe it took me over two weeks to read this book. I mean, it’s only 200 freaking pages! I should have finished it in five days! Two weeks? The hell?

Okay yes, I was kind of opening up my store, and maybe I had a lot of things going on plus sleep, but still. It’s kind of disgusting.

This was the last of the books I borrowed from the library that I’m going to read. When I picked up Moneyball and Bad Science, I also had, like, four other titles to read. Then I realized that there’s no way I’m going to have time to read four books in three weeks. I always do that — go to the library to pick up the one book I reserved, and end up with seven others to take home. Who does that?

So anyway. Barbara Ehrenreich also wrote a book that’s on my To Read List For Life: Nickel and Dimed, which is supposed to be about her attempting to live on minimum wage. Well, Nickel and Dimed wasn’t there, but I remembered Bright-Sided got some good reviews, so I said “what the hell” and added it to my pile.

Flash-forward six weeks later (yes, I had to renew it once), and I’m … not unimpressed, but more “why did I spend so long on that?” Because while I liked the premise — the subtitle is “How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America” — I don’t think the execution was what I expected, and my opinion of the book suffered for it.

And look, I totally own that. It’s nothing against Ms. Ehrenreich, but I think I reached burnout on non-fiction about sixty pages in, but I wanted to see where the undermining came from so I kept reading, and it didn’t show up (in my opinion) until the last fifty pages. Her interest with the idea of positive thinking begins when she’s diagnosed with breast cancer, and she finds frillions of support groups online who proclaim that thinking positively about beating cancer will help fight the illness. Ms. Ehrenreich — who, similarly to myself and Chuck Klosterman, thinks the same things as me about the same things — wants to know where the scientific data backing up that statement is. That leads her on journey through American history, wherein she discusses America’s background with Calvinism as a force to be reckoned with.

Here’s an interesting thought from the early pages that struck me:

By the twentieth century, though, [positive thinking] had gone mainstream, gaining purchase within such powerful belief systems as nationalism and also doing its best to make itself dispensable to capitalism. We don’t usually talk about American nationalism, but it is a mar of how deep it runs that we apply the word “nationalism” to Serbs, Russians, and others, while believing ourselves to possess a uniquely superior version called “patriotism.” [6]

She proceeds through corporate America, and how people who are constantly optimistic are rewarded versus people who may do the same amount of work but with more snark and skepticism. In addition, there’s a bit on the coaching and positive psychology industries that have popped up in recent years and how corporations are relying on them to shape the workforce.

But the chapter that I was waiting for and that I truly enjoyed reading was the last one: “How Positive Thinking Destroyed the Economy.” I’m not going to quote everything that I liked — and I had plenty of dogears in those fifteen pages — but suffice it to say that the people on Wall Street are idiots that believed in their own bullshit Ponzi scheme and then were shocked when the Ponzi scheme didn’t work. (Has there ever been a Ponzi scheme that worked? Has there ever been a scheme that wasn’t tinged in shadiness?)

However — before all y’all get up on your soapboxes and start Occupying places again — Ms. Ehrenreich ends with an epilogue that, boiled down to its barest essentials, pleads with Americans to follow the only good piece of advice that Ronald Reagan ever uttered: “Trust, but verify.” In a way, Ms. Ehrenreich’s message is similar to that of Dr. Goldacre from Bad Science: you need to know the information before you go off doing something about it. And also — and most importantly — if you want to create change that is positive, you’re going to need to put some action behind your thinking about it. Because sitting in a park with signs about being the 99% and yelling at people walking by in suits is all well and good, I suppose (if you’re a fucking hipster), nothing’s going to happen unless you get up off your ass and actually work to change what you’re seeing. Because guys, the status will remain quo until we make it not quo.

Grade for Bright-Sided: 2 stars

Non-Fiction: “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis

I watched Moneyball for my annual Oscar!Watch; this year, due to reasons both within and outside of my control, I only managed to watch five of the 20 major nominees. I’m still unsure how Moneyball was one of the lucky ones I was able to get on Redbox — probably because it was available on Redbox. Anyway, I liked the movie but not enough to want to buy the movie when I can find it for five bucks or less; but I did like it enough to find a copy of the book that it was based on.

See, one of the problems I had with Moneyball the movie [and now all I want to do is call it Moneyballs: The Movie, and if you don't understand why, then I'm sorry, the Schwartz must not be with you] — aside from the fact that I couldn’t get past Brad Pitt not really acting — was that it didn’t really deal with the science behind the idea. The movie played up the 2002 season for the Oakland Athletics as some battle between Brad Pitt’s character and the other members of the A’s management — Brad Pitt wants to go with the underdog characters, while the management team (namely, Philip Seymour Hoffman) wants to run the team the same way he always has in the past. It didn’t explain what Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill were looking for on their computers with their stats; the audience only knew they were doing something different. In short, to quote the Great Moz (from White Collar): “The game has nine innings, the same number as Dante’s circles of Hell.” That was the movie: all nine circles.

So I was intrigued enough to see more of the math behind it. I picked up the book, and I was surprised when I really enjoyed it. I mean, for those of you who don’t know me in “real life,” I am the epitome of the Playoff Fan. I have some good friends who are die-hard fans of both the Red Sox and the New England Patriots. I also have a couple of friends who are die-hard fans of the Yankees. I will watch the Red Sox games when they’re on ESPN or NESN or whatever if there’s nothing else on TV, but in terms of following the entire season and keeping track of who’s been traded and the draft and all of that shit? Fuck it, I’m too busy for that. But when the Patriots or the Sox get into the playoffs, then yes, I’ll pay attention.

And I will never start paying attention to the games in the regular playing season, because I get a perverse sense of pleasure from the frustration my ignorance causes in my guy friends.

Anyway. I really liked Moneyball: The Book, because it didn’t deal completely with Billy Beane (Brad Pitt’s character in Moneyball: The Movie). There would be one chapter about Billy, but then the next chapter would go into the statistics behind sabermetrics, or, even better, an unsung ball player that I’ve never heard of. The main point behind the A’s attempt at team-making was that they went after ball players that had incredible stats in getting on base. The profiles on Scott Hatteburg and Chad Bradford were very interesting. And as someone who considers herself to have a heart of stone where reading books is concerned (unless the book is one of the last four Harry Potter novels), I will admit to getting slightly choked up at the description of Hatteburg being able to win the A’s 20th game in a row.

I’m not a sports girl by any means — I’m fairweather at best. But I really enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it for anyone who likes baseball.

Grade for Moneyball: The Book: 3 stars

Non-fiction: “Bad Science” by Ben Goldacre

After the hell that was the last two books, it was extremely refreshing to read this compendium of how the media and medical communities manipluate scientific findings in order to further their own agendas.

Dr. Ben Goldacre runs a blog (also titled Bad Science), and he turned his blog into the book. He is a medical doctor in England, and while I’m unsure if he practices medicine, he definitely understands medicine — and the scientific method — well enough to distill complex theories down so that someone like me can understand them. Some of the concepts he discusses are: the homeopathy movement and the placebo effect; the new career path that is the nutritionist path; and the MMR vaccine potentially (and, it turns out, spuriously) being a cause of autism.

That sounds like a lot of points. But his main point, throughout the book and the different scenarios and studies, is that in order to understand these complex concepts and ideas, all one needs to do is remain informed of the root of the problem.

For instance: one of “Britain’s leading nutritionist[s]” proclaimed in a column

“… An Australian study in 2001 found that olive oil (in combination with fruit, vegetables and pulses) offered measurable protection aganst skin wrinkling. Eat more olive oil by using it in salad dressings or dip bread in it rather than using butter.” [90-91]

A pretty direct link, yes? However, when Dr. Goldacre did research on the nutritionist’s research (which he recommends you do with any new medical breakthrough, not just nutritionists), he found that the study on which this nutritionist based her findings was compiled by pooling four different groups of people in different lifestyles, “and it found that people who had completely different eating habits … also had different amounts of wrinkles.” What the nutritionist didn’t take into account are the “confounding variables”: things that are related to both the thing you’re attempting to measure (wrinkles) and the thing that we’re trying to find affect it (lifestyle). Not just olive oil reduces wrinkles: the place you live, the job you have, all of those aspects of your lifestyle will affect how you generate wrinkles. In her column, the only thing she latched on to was the olive oil.

And there’s more. But the most disturbing piece was on the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine and the scare that went out across Britain and is seeping into the US: that giving children the MMR vaccine causes autism. What Dr. Goldacre revealed was that the catalyst for the scare was a paper published that told about eight out of twelve children that were brought into a clinic with gastrointestinal problems. All twelve children had a history of autism (here called a “pervasive developmental disorder”). With the eight children in question,

the onset of behavioral problems had been linked, either by the parents or by the child’s physician, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination … In these eight children the average interval from exposure to first behavioral symptoms was 6.3 days (range 1-14). [216]

But how was the link determined? Was it timing? Was another study created based upon this evidence, which seems flimsy at best to a layperson like me, to attempt to prove that the MMR vaccine causes autism? How would one conduct that kind of study — ask parents to make the new Sophie’s Choice, decide whether they want their child to get measles later in life or autism sooner?

I’m not going to get into this here and now. Dr. Goldacre makes the best point he can: that due to many factors, what should have been relegated to the “medical hunch” column got picked up and turned into a national story that created a medical scare no one had seen the likes of. It caused a lot of people to decide to not vaccinate their children, and may have led to an outbreak of the measles in the latter part of the last decade in England. But Dr. Goldacre’s point, again, is this: if the journalists had taken a moment to actually investigate — either on their own or by asking a flotilla of impartial doctors — the tenuous link between MMR and autism, maybe the scare wouldn’t have happened.

Here’s why I really liked this book (although, to be honest, I was expecting the ‘bad science’ to be more along the lines of experiments gone wrong rather than misleading studies and badly reported stories): I’ve been picking away at a second bachelor’s degree, this one in media studies. And my Intro to Communications class was a survey course of different communication theories. I chose to write my paper on Cultivation Theory, which, simply stated, posits that a person will base their worldview on how the world is perceived through media.

A real-world application: let’s say I have a friend who watches just as much TV as I do. And this friend — let’s call her Jane, because I legitimately do not know a Jane — watches the following programs religiously: NCIS, Criminal Minds, Law & Order: SVU, The Vampire Diaries, and Revenge. Now, Jane and I watch NCIS and The Vampire Diaries together, but when Jane goes home, I queue up on the TiVo Community (when it’s on), Once Upon a Time, Modern Family, and Conan.

When Jane and I go into Boston to shop, she stays close to the touristy areas and doesn’t venture far from the beaten path. She keeps a tight grasp on her purse, and doesn’t make eye contact with any passers-by. I, however, nod and smile at people and look for adventure in the oddest of places. Because Jane watches TV that suggests that people — strangers — are either serial killers, psychopaths, and/or sociopaths, she believes that anyone she meets on the street could be a potential villain — or, possibly, a vampire. Whereas I, who watches primarily comedies, believe that people hold the key to the absurd in the everyday, and will trust strangers more easily, and be more adventurous in my travels.

And now, the example that ties everything together!

One of my friends posted to Facebook recently an article discussing a recent House Resolution. According to the linked article, the legislation is the first step towards the United States becoming a police state. The article is titled, “House Passes Bill That Will Make Protesting Illegal at Secret Service Covered Events.” As you can guess, the article claims that “the new legislation allows prosecutors to charge anyone who enters a building without permission or with the intent to disrupt a government function with a federal offense if Secret Service is on the scene …”.

There are many people — not just my facebook friend, but other people, tons who decided to comment anonymously on the article — who believe that this is the government outlawing our god-given right to protest. That any protester, for any reason — or for no reason at all — can be arrested and sent to jail.

Guys. No.

If you read the actual legislation — which I have handily linked to here, for those interested — it is clear that the law is actually written with the, what I call “crazy protesters” in mind. It is clear that the law is designed to protect those precious government buildings and workers from the protestors who intend to disrupt government work, or intend to block the exits or entrances of federal buildings to impede the business going on, or bring physical violence to a protest.

Under this resolution, we as Americans are certainly allowed to protest. The First Amendment gives each of us the right to peaceably assemble. And the most important word in that sentence is peaceably. You can wave signs around in front of any building you wish, and you can yell anything you want at your congressman through the window, and you know what, I’ll bet that you can quietly chant in the Rotunda as long as you aren’t going to reach across the velvet rope and try to accost that congressman. If this law is going to make me do anything, it’s going to protest against the new definition of ‘protest’ that is sweeping the nation.

Anyway. Soapbox destroyed. The point, once more, from myself and from Dr. Goldacre: if people took the time to read things more, and to take the time to become more informed on the facts of a story before storming off to the papers or to post the link to your interwebs, the world would actually be a lot less scary.

Let’s all try it and see if it works. Huh? Come on! It’ll be fun!

Grade for Bad Science: 3.5 stars

Biography: “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” by Edmund Morris

You can blame this one completely on Conan O’Brien.

See, over a month ago, I was watching the Ash Wednesday episode of Conan. I know it was the Ash Wednesday episode because the first guest that night was Pee Wee Herman, and he and the Conan gang put on a skit to tell the story of Ash Wednesday, where Pee Wee was an angel, Conan played Jesus, Andy Richter dressed up as the Devil, and then La Bamba (La Bamba!) came out dressed as an Easter egg, and also, Frankenstein was there. And at the end of the skit, still wearing his Jesus wig, Conan looks to Camera 2 and says, “Coming up next, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris. [laughs loudly] God, I love my job.”

So Edmund Morris comes out and starts talking about Teddy Roosevelt. Apparently, this is the first title in a series of three that he’s written about our … uh … (quickly goes to Wikipedia) 26th president! He was our 26th President! Yes, I totally knew that, as my birthday is on the 26th of something! Don’t look at me like that.

Actually, go ahead and look at me like that. Because once I picked this up from the library (and directly after I went, “holy shit, this is 741 pages of Teddy’s life, and he doesn’t even get to be President in this one?!”) and started reading it, the major a-ha moment I took from this book is that I am not as smart as I think I am.

For instance: Theodore (he apparently didn’t like being called ‘Teddy,’ which I’m pretty sure I knew before-hand) attended Harvard. And as a freshman, he attended a political rally for a candidate named Hayes. And my first thought was, “Aw, that’s too bad – the first guy he backed didn’t make it.” Then, a few pages later, I read this:

About the time he turned nineteen in October 1877, Theodore was informed that his father had been appointed Collector of Customs to the Port of New York by President Hayes. [93]

And I stared at the page, confused, until I remembered five minutes later that yes, there was in fact, a President Hayes.

My next thought, which I uttered out loud and have taken as a new credo, was: “GODDAMN PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION.”

(PS – it took me another five days to remember that it was Rutherford B. Hayes, which is ridiculous – “Rutherford” is my go-to fake middle name for my friend Brad when I get mad at him ["Bradley Rutherford {last name omitted}, DON'T leave your damn time-off requests on my damn keyboard!"])

And look, I don’t know about how your high school taught American History, but here’s how I learned it junior year:
- Our teacher took three class periods — three! — to tell us his life story, including is tour in ‘Nam, and how he only married his long-term girlfriend so they could buy a house
- A lot about the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution
- We watched The Star Chamber and Amistad
- Some junk about the … Reformation? Recombination? The stuff that happened to the South after Lincoln was shot. (back to Wikipedia) RECONSTRUCTION GODDAMN PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

But it’s difficult to remember that year, because ALL of our tests were open-book! I was not held responsible for knowing and/or retaining anything — I just needed to make sure I could find that piece of paper for that question! And then when I started taking English classes in college, I focused on the 19th Century British novel, not American liturature (which is why I know all about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and some of the Renaissance and stuff with Cromwell and James). I can kind of talk about the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age (thanks, Great Gatsby), and I know that it was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that began World War I, but other historic details from the 20th Century? If I haven’t seen the movie, then I don’t know it, because we never got past 1869 in American History back in High School.

For instance, other things that I probably should have known or may have known and forgotten:

The assassination of President Garfield was only the latest in a series of political explosions that shook America in the spring and summer of 1881… [147]

Being from Maine, I should have known that the James G. Blaine that was Roosevelt’s constant political opponent during the early part of the 1880s was the same Blaine that our governor’s mansion is named after. Dear Maine Studies teachers: isn’t that more important than studying the poems from Edna St. Vincent Millay again? Again?!

But enough about how dumb I am. For those like me who didn’t get to study Theodore Roosevelt in school, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt goes into incredible detail about his life leading up to his Presidency. The only President to be born on Manhattan island, Roosevelt was a force to be reckoned with throughout his life. He was originally interested in biology and science, and to my surprise, was able to perform taxidermy on animals from about the age of ten. He was a sickly child, and it seemed that he was always trying to overcompensate for it in later life.

He attended Harvard, intending to become a biologist of some sort. But a professor suggested that maybe he consider politics. Upon graduation, he began attending a local Republican meeting, and was elected Assemblyman in his first election. From there, his career rose meteorically.

Aside from politics, he was an avid reader and writer. In addition to daily correspondance, he wrote three or four biographies, four volumes of The Winning of the West, and his first book, a Naval history of the War of 1812, quickly became required reading for the U.S. Navy. He was always writing, and I especially loved this passage:

The sight of snow tumbling past his study window, and the sound of logs crackling in the grate, combined to produce that sense of calm seclusion a writer most prizes — when the pan seems to move across the paper almost of its own accord, and the words flow steadily down the nib, drying into whorls and curlicues that please the eye; when sentences have just the right rhythmic cadence, paragraphs fall naturally into place, and the pages pile up satisfyingly … [391]

Being a part-time writer (and a full-time frustrated writer), when I get into that grove, I do everything I can to not throw it off.

His many careers included: Assemblyman, rancher in South Dakota, Appointee to the Civil Service Commission (under President Harrison), Police Commissioner of New York City, Assistant Secretary to the Navy, Colonel of the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, Governor of New York, and finally Vice-President. In each case, he worked against corruption and inequality (although, to be fair, when he was in the Navy Department, he really worked inciting the Spanish-American War — thank goodness they sank the Maine before he could do something on his own).

Other facts of note: he once met one of my favorite authors, Bram Stoker. And Stoker saw what he was about to become:

After watching Roosevelt in action at a literary dinner-table, and afterwarad dispensing summary justice in the police courts, Stoker wrote in his diary: “Must be President some day. A man you can’t cajole, can’t frighten, can’t buy.” [514]

And this just made me laugh:

Aware that his audience contained a large proportion of college boys, he warned against the seductions of “the visionary social reformer … the being who reads Tolstoy, or, if he possesses less intellect, Bellamy and Henry George, who studies Karl Marx and Proudhon, and believes that at this stage of the world’s progress it is possible to make everyone happy by an immense social revolution, just as other enthusiasts of a similar mental calbier believe in the possibility of constructing a perpetual-motion machine.” [553]

I know, I know, not particularly funny by itself, right? But if you’re me, and you can recite the history of The Simpsons better than you can that of the Presidents, then you immediately cut to Homer, sitting in bed, and then calling for Lisa to lambast her perpetual-motion machine. (Hey! There’s a video of this on the internets now!)

Finally, here is the best description of Roosevelt’s personality I think anyone would ever be able to find:

[Roosevelt's] personality was cyclonic, in that he tended to become unstable in times of low pressure. The slightest rise in the barometer outside, and his turbulence smoothed into a whirl of coordinated activity, while a core of stillness developed within. Under maximum pressure Roosevelt was sunny, calm, and unnaturally clear. [603]

He was a man to admire, and honestly, I am looking forward to reading the other two books in the series.

But not right now. Dudes, it was 741 pages long! It took me a whole month to read it! This was the only book I read last month, I have to do something to get my numbers back up.

Grade for The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt: 4 stars

Non-Fiction: “The Lost Continent” by Bill Bryson

It’s important, first up, to state the subtitle (which didn’t fit in the title line above): Travels in Small-Town America. This was the last book I brought with me on vacation, and the book I snuck in under the wire to be completed in March. And not only is this the best March I’ve ever had with regards to number of books read in a single month, but March 2011 is the best month on record. Ever. So congratulations, March 2011, with your total of seven titles: you are awesome.

Anyway. Why I brought this book with me on vacation: my plan for vacation was to fly out to California, drive up to San Francisco*, stay with a friend for a couple of days, and then drive back to the airport I flew into over the course of four days by taking the Pacific Coast Highway, and spending the nights in cute towns in part to find out if I wanted to relocate to one of those towns someday. I stopped in Monterey (not really the nicest place to visit, interestingly enough), Morro Bay/San Luis Obispo (very pretty), the afore-mentioned Santa Barbara, and holy crap, Newport Beach. Oh, Newport Beach. I have not seen such a pretty town in my life. It’s just too bad that the day I flew out, a chunk of the Pacific Coast Highway fell into the ocean outside of Carmel, forcing me to skip the entire Big Sur part of the PCH.

Uh, right. The book. I brought it because I’ve heard Bill Bryson is funny (he is), and also, because I adore road trips. I totally plan on returning to California someday to pick up some of the pieces I missed, but also, one of my bucket list trips is to start the PCH at the border between Washington and Canada and drive it to Mexico. And I want to do the same thing with US Route 1: that one goes between Fort Kent, Maine, and Key West.

It took me half the book to figure out that it was written in 1988, so some of the references are a bit dated. But Bryson, who had relocated to Britain upon graduating college, returns to his hometown of Des Moines following his father’s death. And he decides to return to some of the places his father would take the family on vacation growing up, and what was supposed to be a mini trip turns into an epic that lasts more than a month and covers 38 of the lower 48 states.

He starts out in the Midwest and moves south to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and then heads north through the Carolinas. He travels like me: in a zig-zag fashion across states, going back and forth, only staying one night and then moving on. What Bryson really enjoyed doing was going to these small towns to partake in whatever local claim to fame the town lays claim to.

One of my favorite things about the book was that he’s been to some of the same places I’ve been. Some, quite recently. Remember that asterisk up there, about driving to San Francisco?:

My plan was to drive up through the hidden heart of California, through the fertile San Joaquin Valley. Nobody ever goes there. There is a simple reason for this, as I was to discover. It is really boring. [252]

It’s actually not that boring. Of course, I was gawking like an idiot at the farmland and the rain and the oil pumps, and there wasn’t really any traffic to speak of, and I had the best CDs ever and it was a little rainy but I was flying at 80 miles, and it wasn’t the entire Interstate 5, and okay, yeah, maybe it was a little boring, but not as bad as how Bryson tells it.

He also visited Colonial Williamsburg. Now, I have gone on many vacations with my family, and like the Brysons, the Pattersons are also a frugal clan. So when we went to Colonial Williamsburg the first time, we experienced what Bryson went through:

I had lived in America long enough to know that if the only way into Williamsburg was to buy a ticket there would be an enormous sign on the wall saying, YOU MUST HAVE A TICKET. DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT TRYING TO GET IN WITHOUT ONE. But there wasn’t any such sign. I went outside, back out into the bright sunshine, and watched where the shuttle buses were going. They went down the driveway, joined a highway and disappeared around a bend. I crossed the highway, dodging the traffic, and followed a path through some woods. In a few seconds I was in the village. It was as simple as that. I didn’t have to pay a penny. Nearby the shuttle buses were unloading ticketholders. They had had a ride of roughly 200 yards and were about to discover that what their tickets entitled them to do was join long, ill-humored lines of other ticketholders standing outside each restored historic building, sweating in silence and shuffling forward at a rate of one step every three minutes. I don’t think I had ever seen quite so many people failing to enjoy themselves. [109]

Now, what happened to the Patterson family that did not happen to Bill, here, is that when we went, my sister and I were, what, 12 and 8 respectively? I think? Well, we were young. And young kids passing those lines of people waiting to get into those restored historic buildings but not allowed into those buildings because they don’t have a ticket? That’s heartbreaking. And we whined like crazy. Mom was then forced to buy us each quills and other completely useless trinkets to shut us up. (Mom also had to promise Dad that yes, we would be going to Busch Gardens and he could ride the Loch Ness Monster as many times as he wanted.)

But it’s true – if any of you ever want to go to Colonial Williamsburg, you can get practically the same amount of information for free as you can for paying what is most likely now a $40 admission fee. So remember, kids — always check for a way to sneak into things.

As you travel this great country of ours, there are certain truths we always encounter. First and foremost, nothing — nothing — is free. (Colonial Williamsburg, I’m sure, has since instilled at the very least, a parking fee.) Secondly, if you go to any science museum, public park, or aquarium — grr, the aquarium; curse you, Monterey Bay Aquarium — there will be kids running around everywhere, tripping you, cutting you off in pedestrian traffic so they can get a good view of that really large whale, and, worst of all, blocking your “arty” “photography” shots.

But, thirdly, there will also be old people.

The old people were noisy and excited, like schoolchildren, and pushed in front of me at the ticket booth, little realizing that I wouldn’t hesitate to give an old person a shove, especially a Baptist. Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead. [75]

I ran into this a couple of times on the 101 in Central California: old-timey movie theaters.

Downtown movie houses are pretty much a thing of the past in America, alas, alas. [79]

The one in Salinas is closed, which made me sad. It gave me the thought that that could be something I’d want to do — y’know, when I get that bajillion dollars I keep talking about — buy an old-timey movie theater, renovate it, and tap into the nostalgia factor and get it to be popular. But the one in San Luis Obispo was still working, which made me happy. But it was showing Battle for L.A., which promptly made me sad again.

Another item that hit particularly close to home for me was this piece about the highways running through Boston:

Boston’s freeway system was insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains. Every few hundred yards I would find my lane vanishing beneath me and other lanes merging with it from the right or left, or sometimes both. This wasn’t a road system, it was mobile hysteria. Everybody looked worried. I had never seen people working so hard to keep from crashing into each other. And this was a Saturday — God knows what it must be like on a weekday. [154]

Bill Bryson, I see your “what must it be like on a weekday” and raise you “driving through Boston during a blizzard while still hungover after your New Year’s party.”

Remember when I said that this book was written back in 1988? Well, doesn’t this seem eerie?:

I spent the night in Dearborn [MI] for two reasons. First, it would mean not having to spend the night in Detroit, the city with the highest murder rate in the country. In 1987, there were 635 homicides in Detroit, a rate of 58.2 per 100,000 people or eight times the national average. Just among children, there were 365 shootings in which both the victim and gunman were under sixteen (of whom 40 died). We are talking about a tough city — and yet it is still a rich one. What it will become like as the American car industry collapses in upon itself doesn’t bear thinking about. People will have to start carrying bazookas for protection. [180]

Before I leave you with my final thought, here are Bryson’s rules for eating on the road:

1. Never eat in a restaurant that displays photographs of the food it serves. (But if you do, never believe the photograph.)
2. Never eat in a restaurant attached to a bowling alley.
3. Never eat in a restaurant with flocked wallpaper.
4. Never eat in a restaurant where you can hear what they are saying in the kitchen.
5. Never eat in a restaurant that has live entertainers with any of the following words in their titles: Hank, Rhythm, Swinger, Trio, Combo, Hawaiian, Polka.
6. Never eat in a restaurant that has bloodstains on the walls.

Finally, here’s how Bryson describes Wyoming:

Wyoming is the most fiercely Western of all the Western states. It’s still a land of cowboys and horses and wide open spaces, a place where a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do… [272-273]

And when I read that, my head went to this, from the masterpiece Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog:

And that’s how we got a Bonus!Nathan Fillion.

Grade for The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America: 4 stars

Memoir: “My Booky Wook” by Russell Brand

After watching Get Him to the Greek, my friend went out and bought My Booky Wook. She read it in, like, a day, and then gave it to me to read. And because it was a book I was borrowing (and not one I’d bought months ago), I started reading it immediately so as to return it to her as soon as possible.

It took me entirely too long to read this book. And I’m not sure why. I like Russell Brand – he was hilarious on Conan – and Get Him to the Greek was funny enough. He totally stole Forgetting Sarah Marshall from Jason Segal and Kristen Bell (I almost called her Veronica Mars for a second). What I especially love about Russell Brand (and, if you want to get into it, Ricky Gervais as well) is his accent and how multi-syllabic words are spit out in his choppy, Essex lilt. And as I write this, I wonder if the book was too long because after a while, it stopped sounding like Russell Brand and just like any other sort of book(y wook).

I think everyone can agree that even the most ridiculous things sound completely logical and intelligent when spoken in a down-and-dirty British accent. And what I love about Russell Brand, Ricky Gervais, and Monty Python’s band of lovable scamps is that they routinely speak of intelligent, scholarly things, and their appearance and their accents completely belie the initial assumption that they wouldn’t talk about those things because they look like they wouldn’t know what they’re talking about. Wait — that came out completely wrong. Let’s try this: this is something I’ve contemplated in the past, but Brand manages to speak of it quite easily:

When we first got Topsy [his first childhood pet], she would be allowed to sleep in the bed with me: I hope it is not necessary for me to stress the platonic nature of that relationship — not platonic in the purist sense, there was no philosophical discourse, but we certainly didn’t fuck, which is usually what people mean by platonic; which I bet would really piss Plato off, that for all his thinking and chatting his name has become an adjective for describing sexless trysts. [44]

Wouldn’t that piss Plato off? I mean, if I were known in my time as a symbol for higher thinking and pure contemplation, only to learn that two thousand (or so) years after my demise, my name has come to be associated with the first two-thirds of When Harry Met Sally. Come on.

If you’re expecting some hilarious, Hollywood inside track in this book, look elsewhere. My Booky Wook is strictly about Brand’s life – his childhood in a somewhat broken home, his deisre to be an actor and famous above all else, and for a good amount of the book, his life as an addict of multiple vices. Between alcohol, drugs, heroin, and sexual addiction, he has covered all the addictive bases (except for chocolate and sugar – but perhaps he left that for My Booky Wook 2).

Russell Brand’s determination and intention shine through on every page, and it’s well-written. In the end, I’m not sure why I didn’t like it more. Actually, my friend Brad and I discussed this briefly as I told him that I had read the book(y wook) and didn’t really like it. He said, “I like him, but in small doses. Get Him to the Greek? I wanted to shoot myself. But he was hilarious in that Veronica Mars movie.” And I think that’s it: it took so long to read because Russell Brand is a good-in-small-doses comedian. Over three hundred pages of Russell Brand is too much Russell Brand.

Grade for My Booky Wook: 1.5 stars

Essays: “IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas” by Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman makes his living writing about pop culture. He primarily worked for SPIN and Esquire — in fact, that’s where the majority of the essays found within IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas were originally published. In fact, the first third of the book is primarily on music (SPIN); the second third is primarily on other pop culture ideas (Esquire); and the small, third third is a piece of barely-previously published fiction.

I read Chuck Klosterman because, in many cases, I find he thinks like me. Or, rather, I think like him. Or, even more rather, we both think the same thing about the same things. And, much like with Waiter Rant, it inspires me. I read Chuck Klosterman and I think, “Hey, I could do this for a living.” Unfortunately for me, the swath of pop culture that I discuss is relatively small. As I (just) said back in the review for Feast of Murder, I am a reviewer of spectator-based behaviors: I review books that I read. I hope that my opinions spur people to pick up a book they may not have looked at previously (and, conversely, spur people to avoid bad books by ranting about them in an obnoxious manner), but I am well aware that I take up a very tiny corner of the Internet, and tiny corners of the Internet rarely inspire people to do anything other than laugh (depending on the corner).

I am okay with this. Don’t ever think that I’m not.

So while it is unlikely that a publishing company will ever offer me a deal wherein I put all my entries about the books I’ve read into a book of its own (because who would read that?), I still carry the hope that what I’m doing here is just practice for something larger. In fact, I could use many of Klosterman’s essays found in IV as starting-off points.

For instance: the first third is about music and bands and other stuff found in SPIN magazine. One of the first essays is about U2. U2 is one of my most favorite bands of all time. I think, at this point, I have every single U2 album in my iTunes library except Zooropa (this is weird to me [EDIT: as I was making the point below, I realized I also do not have Boy]). But the point I’d like to make is based on this quote from the essay “Mysterious Days”:

[U2's] ironic distance also seems to be a product of the 1997 Pop album and its subsequent Pop-Mart tour, two projects that largely failed. “I think what happened with that record was this fusion of electronic and the club world, which was not foreign to us,” says [Adam] Clayton. “But what we should have focused on were tracks that were going to be radio friendly. We presented tracks that sounded — in a European context — absolutely appropriate to what we’d hear on the radio. That whole record did a lot better in Europe. But American programmers wouldn’t play it. I think that was where we kind of screwed up.” [29-30]

I disagree. And it took me a while to discover Pop, but it’s — yeah, I think I can say this honestly — my favorite album by U2. I just did a survey of my U2 albumage on iTunes, and I think Pop has the highest percentage of songs played. I know that I’ve put a good many of the songs on different playlists, but I know I’ve got the actual CD in my car, and when I was working and had access to a CD player for when I was receiving the trucks, Pop was what I’d pop in (because god forbid I have to listen to Tim’s ever-present Elvis Costello CDs one more freaking time — also, that pun was completely unintentional. Sorry). I think that if U2 had tried to release Pop now, it’d get more airplay. I’m not sure why; maybe because it’s not really preachy at all (“If God Will Send His Angels” and this line from “Please” aside: “Love is hard / and love is tough / but love is not / what you’re thinking of“). Pop is all about … well, pop. Discotheques, and being gone, and living life like it’s your last night on earth. I mean, come on, there’s a song all about the Playboy Mansion on this disc. Can you imagine that song next to “Sunday Bloody Sunday”? I can’t (although my shuffle has at times).

But this is not an essay about U2. This is supposed to be an essay about IV. And I’m getting off on tangents.

It comes to my attention that I haven’t used any of Klosterman’s words in this yet. Have a taste:

On “Stairway to Heaven” (in an essay where he creates allusions and connections between every song on Led Zeppelin’s fourth album to other heavy metal bands/songs/concepts):

“Stairway to Heaven” = metal power balland = Warrant’s “Heaven.” Depending on your perspective, “Stairway to Heaven” is either (a) the most popular song of the rock era, or (b) the most overplayed song in FM history, thereby making it either (c) the greatest track of the past fifty years, or (d) the only song worse than “Hotel California.” Yet the significance of this never-released single will haunt proms for all eternity. It allowed — nay, demanded — that every metal band make at least one song that your mom might like. [91-92]

For me, I choose (b) and (d). I’m not sure if Mom likes it or not. (She’ll probably tell me after she reads this, though.)

On a possible robotic uprising:

My relationship with my toaster is delicious, but completely one-sided. [309]

And:

Here is the entire history of rock music, recounted in one paragraph: rock music did not exist until the release of Meet the Beatles in January 1964. From that time until 1970, the Beatles were simultaneously the most artistically gifted and commercially successful rock artists on the planet. Then they broke up. And at that point, rock split into two opposing ideologies; there were now two kinds of music. The prime directive of the first kind of rock was to be meaningful and important; the prime directive of the second was to entertain people and move product. The first category comprises elements (Springsteen, punk rock, early U2, Chris Carrabba, etc.) that followed a template built by Dylan in the 1960s. The second category comprise things (Elton John, disco, everything the Stones did post-Some Girls, Michael Jackson, et al.) that followed the path KISS chose when they formed in 1973. This era includes two exceptions, which are Led Zeppelin and Prince; everything else fits into either category A or category B. And that is the entire history of rock music, completely condensed into one paragraph. [359]

Some things are only funny (or, conversely, even funnier) when noting that these essays were mostly written between 2003 and 2006. For instance:

“The point,” says Meg [White], “is being a live band.” [115]

Their last ‘tour,’ which I believe was for Icky Thump (so, back in 2007, 2008?), had to be canceled due to Meg White’s supreme stage fright.

Or this one, about a young Michael Phelps in 2004:

Everyone is going to be ecstatic about the prospect of Michael Phelps winning as many as eight gold medals in swimming, even though I have yet to find a single person who knows who Michael Phelps is. [257]

Some of what Klosterman talks about resonate completely with me. In fact, it’s almost as if he’s talking about me…

You know, fast food really isn’t that fast. I went through the drive-through today and — after I paid for my food — they told me I had to park my car and wait. “It will be a few minutes on those McNuggets,” they sneered. Doesn’t this defeat the whole purpose of using the drive-through? “We’ll run them out to you,” they said. Oh yeah, I’m sure they’ll “run.” Those trolls don’t give a damn if I live or die. [61]

Now that I use this quote, I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually told the story about the Hooker McDonald’s. I have a McDonald’s down the street from where I live (conveniently for the story, on a corner). And they have the slowest drive-through window, and the entire establishment is run by moronic tweens. And when I say ‘moronic tweens,’ I mean even more moronic than you would expect the average teenager who works at a McDonald’s to be. (And I don’t mean to slight the hard-working young Americans who are valiantly working at the McDonald’s in your neighborhood; I’m sure they’re great. There’s nothing wrong with working at a McDonald’s. There is something wrong with working at a McDonald’s when you’re thirty-four and still living with your mother, however. Just putting that out there.) I mean, who tells a driver at 10:50 p.m. that they’re on their late night menu, and McDonald’s doesn’t serve hamburgers at that time? MY McDONALD’S, that’s who. Stupid hooker manager running the hooker McDonald’s. And don’t get me STARTED on the hooker Starbucks.

Neptuna is the reason Cheap Chick became a reality; the band was her idea, and she handles all the publicity and booking. “My talent does not lie with being a phenomenal bass player,” she says. “My true talent is talking people into doing stupid things.” [189]

This is a talent I have, though probably not to the extent of this Neptuna person. “Hey, let’s go get lost in Northeast New Hampshire!” “What do you mean, bringing Rowdy the Fake Dog to Rangeley Lakes is a bad idea? It’s a GREAT idea!”

I will conclude with the best, most awesome example of It’s All About Alaina (I should start making this point in every entry) after discussing when Klosterman gets political. He doesn’t get political in the same way that Sara Paretsky got political in Writing in an Age of Silence; instead, he points out the stupidity in mass media as well as in Americans and culture as a whole. He has a wonderful essay on Johnny Carson’s death and how America will never again have a shared cultural experience like “Johnny Carson” that I pretty much quoted in its entirety in the first draft (aren’t you glad I’m on Rangeley Lake with no Internets so I have to type this old-school [in MS Word] first?), but I was probably looking at the “Johnny Carson” phenomenon too closely, considering the entire I’m With Coco movement of the past year. But this quote stuck out:

This is not the purpose of art and culture, but it’s probably the biggest social benefit; these shared experiences are how we connect with other people, and it’s how we understand our own identity. However, all the examples I mentioned are specific and personal; they are only pockets of a shared existence. They are things individual people choose to understand, and finding others who understand them equally are products of coincidence.

This is how I interact on a daily basis. My conversations with Brad are almost entirely pop-culture-based. “Did you see last night’s episode of How I Met Your Mother?” “Oh, that Barney Stinson!” Terri and I talk about books. Kerri and I have our own brand of pop culture references: our personal pop culture, if you will (though every time we hear the Kinks’ “Lola” on the radio, even if we’re not together, we notify the other somehow and diverge into the Futurama reference of “Leela” and Zapp Brannigan). It is coincidence that Kerri and I both watched Futurama on Adult Swim; we didn’t set out to have that joint knowledge. Brad got into How I Met Your Mother first, and I caught on when I moved into the apartment and found that Amelia watched it. That’s how friendships work: we create our own culture. But a collective-consciousness like “Johnny Carson,” where everyone knows who he is and what he sells even if you’ve never actually seen The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson (like me) is probably dead and gone.

Oh, the sun came out again and I should head back outside. I’M ALMOST DONE, I PROMISE. As I’ve said many-a-time, I watch a lot of TV. A lot. And even though I talk at the screen (to my sister’s continuing dismay) and become overly-emotionally-involved with the characters (I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT LOST, SEE?), I don’t get wound up by TV too much. (She says, tongue-in-cheek.)

Don’t get pissed off because people didn’t vote the way you voted; you knew this was a democracy when you agreed to participate, so you knew this was how things might work out. Basically, don’t get pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn’t some kind of universal consensus. Because if you do, you will end up feeling betrayed. And it will be your own fault. You will feel bad, and you will deserve it. [286]

And that’s the best advice I can give anyone like me who watches too much TV. I don’t feel betrayed by FOX for cancelling Arrested Development anymore; I see it was a business decision. But enough people know it was a stupid business decision that I’m okay with it in the end. The end of Lost didn’t bother me, and I don’t care if it did other people. Because I don’t feel betrayed.

The other essay that I was going to quote in its entirety but then realized that this entry has 2500 words already (1000 of those words are Chuck Klosterman’s, in my defense) was his essay called “I Wanna Get Free,” in which he details why America will never experience a revolution. I highly recommend everyone go out and read that one essay. Here: it’s on page 338, and it’s only four pages long. Remember that the next time you go to your local Barnes & Noble / Border’s.

Okay, the final point, and then I’m done. Chuck Klosterman managed to find another person — besides me, and besides the entire writing staff of Lost — who tells stories that go nowhere.

This is the Journey story:

“I’d seen Journey in 1980 or ’81, opening for the Rolling Stones at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia,” Mr. Graziano begins. “Journey comes out onstage, and Steve Perry takes the mic and says to the audience: ‘You know what you guys just did? You just made Journey the number-one band in America.’ But the crowd was like, ‘Fuck you, we want the Stones.’ They threw bottles at him. So then we’re in the Grand Wailea Hotel in Maui on our honeymoon — this is four years ago — and we run into Neal Schon and his wife at the hotel bar. We introduce ourselves, and I tell him I remember seeing him in Philadelphia twenty years ago, and he goes, ‘Oh man, I remember that show, Perry opened up his fucking mouth.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, man, they were throwing bottles at you guys,’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, they fucking were.’”

That’s the whole story.

At first, I am substantially underwhelmed by this anecdote, mostly because it has a beginning and a middle but no discernible conclusion. [87-88]

I DO THIS ALL THE TIME. I AM KNOWN FOR THIS IN CERTAIN CIRCLES. I am impressed, amazed, and inspired. If this dude who met some other dude from Journey can get into a book, I can for my story about the woman with the tick, right?

Right?

Grade for Chuck Klosterman IV: 4 stars

Non-Fiction: “Kitchen Confidential” by Anthony Bourdain

Yes, I did the thing where I read one book about a waiter at a high-end New York City restaurant and then turned around and read the book about a chef at a high-end New York City restaurant. Admittedly, Anthony Bourdain is much more widely-known, and also, I’ve read this book twice before.

The book kind of goes all over the place – it starts with Anthony’s childhood and a trip to France with his parents and brother. The summer started with he and his brother acting like normal tourist kids: asking for hamburgers and complaining about the cheese. After his parents lock* them in the car so they can enjoy a traditional French dinner without the kids, Young Tony realizes that Food is Good. This causes him to try anything and everything he can get his hands on, including a raw oyster. This essentially seals the deal for him going into a culinary career.

[*Sidenote: I seriously just typed that "locke." I HAVE BEEN WATCHING TOO MUCH LOST.]

And his career, to start, was rocky. Starting in Provincetown (P-Town, to New Englanders) as a dishwasher, he quickly moved up to line cook. After an embarrassing moment, he decides to join the CIA (Culinary Institute of America, for all you non-foodies out there). He goes back to P-Town and gets a swelled head. After another summer, he hits New York.

Tony writes like a chef – direct, full of expletives, humorous. There is an entire chapter of the language that cooks use, both epithets, euphemisms and actual swear words. And, with an emotion that I’ve felt at times:

The tone of the repartee was familiar, as was the subject matter, a strangely comfortable background music to most of my waking hours over the last two decades or so — and I realized that, my God … I’ve been listening to the same conversation for twenty-five years! [220]

Some other fun moments:

“Who’s making food these days that interests you?” I asked.

“Oh, let’s see … Tom. Tom Collicchio at Gramercy Tavern. Tom makes really good food … and Rocco di Spirito at Union Pacific is doing interesting stuff.” [266]

Tom Collicchio! The best part of Top Chef! (yes, I watch that show. shut up, it’s awesome.) He is a cold-hearted bitch: all he cares about is the food. And I love him.

In one chapter, Tony describes one of his crew: Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown. A great bread man, but an overall crazy person. One day, Tony and his wife decide to invite Adam skiing:

And [Adam] skied like a hero, though he’s the last person in the world who should be allowed. He had his ski boots on the wrong feet for the first hour. He had neglected to bring gloves or mittens. He lost a ski pole. [240]

I can imagine that this is what I would be like when I dare to go skiing (I never have).

At the end of the book (don’t worry, I’m returning to the meat of it in a minute – heh, meat, because he’s a chef, and … yeah, sorry, I’m done) Tony travels to Les Halles Tokyo and is enraptured with the Japanese culture and, most importantly, food. He spends his days wandering the town on foot, trying everything he can. The Friday or Saturday night he’s there, he encounters this:

Mobs of people surged in never-ending waves toward Shibuya station to meet friends and lovers by the statue of a dog. The dog, it was explained to me, had continued to show up every day at the station, long after its master had died. [285]

Why is this important? It’s not really, not in the grand scheme of the book. Why it stood out to me was because last week, Lisa, with whom I work, asked me if I had ever watched this movie about a dog who is adopted by his master, and he loves him so much he follows him to the train station every day, and then one day, the master dies, but the dog doesn’t really realize it, so he still waits for him at the train station, and oh my god you guys, I was tearing up listening to Lisa tell the story. Not only that, but it made me think of that episode of Futurama where Fry’s dog has been frozen in cement and he wants Seymour to be reanimated, but then they can’t, and the episode ends with Seymour sitting in front of Panucci’s Pizza waiting for Fry to come home and the dog just keeps getting older and older and OH MY GOD FUTURAMA YOU BROKE ME JUST NOW.

Anyway. Lisa just told me about that movie, and I wanted to reread Kitchen Confidential before lending it to … Lisa. Coincidence? You decide.

So here’s what this book always inspires in me: a chance to be daring in my food. I am an aspiring foodie, but I lack the guts to back it up. I am a picky eater. If I go out to a restaurant and see a menu with a couple of dishes where I know the ingredients and know that I like the ingredients, I will most likely order it. If I don’t, I don’t try it. How sad is that? Reading this book always makes me want to experiment with food.

I mean, how inspiring is this?:

They say that Rasputin used to eat a little arsenic with breakfast every day, building up resistance for the day that an enemy might poison him, and that sounds like good sense to me. Judging from accounts of his death, the Mad Monk wasn’t fazed at all by the stuff … perhaps we, as serious diners, should emulate his example. We are, after all, citizens of the world — a world filled with bacteria, some friendly, some not so friendly. Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed pope-mobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald’s? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. [p. 74-75]

Every time. Every time I read that, I want to rush out and try the craziest restaurant, spend a hundred dollars or more and try everything.

But I usually end up going to a chain restaurant instead. And really, how sad is that?

Grade for Kitchen Confidential: 5 stars

Non-fiction: “Waiter Rant” by Steve Dublanica

Here’s the story of how I acquired Waiter Rant. My sister, Missy the Kid and I were in Border’s just before Christmas, and had the following conversation:

Missy: Hey, since I probably won’t be able to get you that Nintendo 64 for Christmas like I wanted to, what else do you want?
Me: I dunno … [reads the back of Waiter Rant; shrugs] You can get me this, I guess.
Missy: ‘K.

Flash-forward to Christmas morning: “Hey, Waiter Rant!”

Can I tell you how glad I am that I picked up the book to read the back of it? And that Missy was standing right there asking me if there was something other than Mario Kart 64 I wanted for Christmas? And that she remembered? Dudes, this book was amazing. I picked this up Saturday afternoon after finishing Deja Dead and finished it this morning. This is the fastest I’ve read a book in months. It was so hard to put it down! Which was difficult, because my vacation was over and I had classes and work and stuff. (It’s pretty poor form to be reading a book called Waiter Rant while on the sales floor.)

Waiter Rant started out as a blog – not unlike … well, not this one.  That’s What She Read is solely for book reviews and the like. I am referring to my other blog, that a couple of you know about but not too many and let’s just keep that between us, ‘kay? Anyway. The Waiter (who remains anonymous through the book until the last page, save for the name on the cover) started a blog over at WaiterRant.net back in 2004, talking about his experiences as a waiter at The Bistro, a high-end bistro in New York City. Over time, the blog gained notice and followers, and in 2006 he won a Bloggie Award (there are blog awards!?) for Best Writing of a Weblog. The site eventually turned into a book deal, and … well, then I ended up with a copy as a temporary replacement for Mario Kart 64. And loved every second of it.

And throughout the second half of it, I kept thinking to myself, “Hey, this could happen to me if I had the stones to write about Where I Work, even though we were explicitly told Not To.” Because God forbid one of the customers who asks me if I work there while I’m wearing the uniform, apron, and nametag and holding a pile of merchandise with a walkie-talkie in my ear decides to search “bitchy sales rep at Where I Work blog” on google and find my rant about her.

Not that I’ve done this. At all. Ahem.

Non-fiction: “Writing in an Age of Silence” by Sara Paretsky

I truly enjoy Sara Paretsky’s V I Warshawski mystery novels, and when Writing in An Age of Silence first came out, I immediately put it on my To Read List. It’s taken a couple of years, but I found a copy at my Local Library^TM.