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A YEAR’S WORTH OF WORDS
As the turning of the year arrives, we won't be ringing out the old
and ringing in the new, so much as we'll watch 2007 slink off into
history and brace ourselves for the chaotic mess that will be 2008
In the book world, 2007 was nutty as always: There was the end
of the Harry Potter series and the outing of
Dumbledore, The ever-expanding reach of
Oprah Winfrey (as I write, 12 of the current
bestsellers in hardcover and paperback are
either Oprah's Book Club picks or have been
featured on her show). There was an early
pre-primary deluge of presidential candi
dates' memoirs and statements of how he or
she will return us to that Norman Rockwell
America that never actually existed.
James Patterson released eight books this
year, two of which he actually wrote. Ann
Coulter put out yet another lunatic screed
with yet another cover photo of her stick
like body in a little black dress. We lost
Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut at a
time when we really need their brilliant
humanity.
This, then, is the list of the best books
I read this year, at least the new ones,
excluding titles I've already reviewed in
these pages (though if you haven't read My
Lobotomy or Deer Hunting with Jesus yet, go
do it now).
A The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First
Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman (Simon & Schuster):
Fcrget Criss Angel. He's a punk. We all know that his Mindfreaks
are the product of a team of engineers and that without them,
he's just another guy with great hair and
guyliner. Harry Houdini was the real deal—
magician, escape artist, movie star, aviator,
and, according to this new biography, secret
agent. Kalush and Sloman delve deep into
Houdini's activities on behalf of America's
nascent intelligence agencies and lay out
the whole story of Houdini's later career as a
debunker of fake mediums and his war with the
"Psychic Mafia," and they offer up their theory
that the punch in the stomach that killed him
may well have been deliberately thrown. A fas
cinating portrait of the man and his legend.
Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the
Revolution That Shaped a Generation by Marc
Fisher (Random House): If, like me, you listen
to what passes for FM radio and wonder what
the hell happened, Fisher's book is for you. By
turns deeply affectionate and highly critical,
Fisher traces the history of radio in the Top-40
era, from the first shows to feature on-air personalities to the cur
rent age of multimedia corporate monopolies and programming-
by-focus-group. In between, we meet the great figures—Alan
Freed, Jean Shepherd, Wolfman Jack, Hunter Hancock, Murray the
K, Howard Stern—who've shaped radio with
their voices and various psychoses alone.
rejects a literalist view of the Bible and of the supernatural aspects
of the Son of God in favor of Jesus the man. Spong traces the
crises of faith that led him to walk away from a church with which
he was becoming increasingly alienated but which led him to
an ever-deepening concord with Christ. He
concludes that if we ignore the trappings
associated with Jesus and focus purely on
what He taught and who He must have been
in the real world, we find something even
more inspiring and worthy of emulation.
The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts,
Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones by Anthony
Bourdain (St. Martin's Trade): Bourdain is
one of my heroes, the anti-celebrity chef, a
welcome wiseass antidote to the relentless
perkiness of Rachael Ray and the homespun
saccharine of Paula Deen. Bourdain is a
kitchen monster, a working chef who may
live on TV now, but never strays far from
the trench warfare that is real restaurant
work. The Nasty Bits is a collection of his
various magazine pieces over the years,
which, taken all together, comprise a love
letter to good food and bad behavior
written with his characteristic acid wit and
snarkitude.
Y Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob
Sheffield (Random House): Funny and tragic in the way that only
a mix tape can be, former Rolling Stone writer Sheffield's memoir
tells the story, in 15 chapters with 15 actual mix tapes, of his
life with Renee, an "Appalchian punk-rock girl" who fulfilled him,
married him, and then suddenly died of a pul
monary embolism. As Sheffield describes his
torturous journey through the grieving process,
he simultaneously meditates on the sound
tracks of our lives, the inteqral effect that
music has on how we see the world. Stunning
as both a love story and a pop-culture mem
oir, this is the kind of goods Nick Hornby and
Chuck Klosterman deliver at their best.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie
War by Max Brooks (Random House): This is
Brooks' followup to his hugely successful The
Zombie Survival Guide, but while that book was
played for laughs, this one is deadly serious.
Told through the device of a United Nations
researcher gathering testimony in the after-
math of the end of the world, the novel tells
of the virulent disease that rages through the
global population, turning us all into a relent
less living-dead army that swarms over every
nation and .eveals, incidentally, certain truths about just how
unprepared we are as societies and as people for the worst-case
scenario. Both as a masterwork of horror, vividly portrayed, and
as a cautionary analogy for everything from natural disaster to
nuclear war, Brooks's novel is chilling and
horrific and very, very good.
400
FACTS
ABOUT THE
WORLD'S
GREATEST
HUMAN
The American Home Front: 1941-1942 by
Alistair Cooke (Grove Atlantic): For my gen
eration, Cooke is that stuffy old guy who
used to introduce "Masterpiece Theatre" on
PBS, but this book reminds us of just how
good a journalist and essayist he was back
in the day. Recently unearthed from his
papers (security restrictions during the war
forced him to mothball it), the book tells
of BBC correspondent Cooke's cross-country
road trip in the year following America's
entry into World War II. His portrait of a
nation still reeling from Pearl Harbor and
struggling with the massive deployment of
sons and husbands is evocative and lyrical.
Given the sheer number of books dealing
with the war Over There, Cooke's reportage
of life Over Here is a wonderful read.
Jesus for the Non-Religious by John
Shelby Spong (HarperCollins): In his latest meditation on faith and
reason—sure to inflame the legion of critics who refer to him
as "the heretic Spong"—the former Episcopal bishop of Newark
and Harvard lecturer makes a case for a perspective on Christ that
THE TRUTH ABOUT
CHUCK NORRIS
< The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400
Facts About the World's Greatest Human
by Ian Spector (Gotham Books): Chuck
Norris once visited the Virgin Islands—now
they're just called The Islands. Chuck Norris
can kick someone in the back of the face.
Every piece of furniture in Chuck Norris'
house is a Total Gym. Drawn from Ian
Specter's website of contributors' "facts"
about karate master, American hero and
premier thespian Chuck Norris, this is
without question the funniest damn book
I read all year. A laugh-out-loud-till-you-
can't-breathe compendium of hype sending
up the wooden, two-dimensional tough-
guy persona of the notoriously humor
less Norris (rumor is he's planning to sue
Spector), this is perfect for passing around
in a group of friends or taking with you
to the restroom for leisurely reading. Of
course Chuck Norris takes a baseball bat to the bathroom with him,
just in case he craps out a wildcat and has to beat it to death.
John 6. Nettles
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