No, this isn't necessarily the best book I've read all year, but it seems that every year, one book unexpectedly screams at me, "Everyone you know must read me!" One year it was Into the Wild; another was The Last Days of Summer. This year, that book is Inconspicuous Consumption.
The subtitle, "An Obsessive Look at the Stuff We Take for Granted, from the Everyday to the Obscure," pretty much sums up the book. Lukas examines items that we never think twice about (hence the "inconspicuous" of the title) and some that I wish I'd never heard about (musk-flavored Lifesavers?). He discovers the secrets behind the Brannock device, the thingamabob that measures your foot size at shoe stores; the portable urinal; even the Green Bay Packers' uniforms. I'd love to see his apartment -- it sounds like what I think Heaven must be like.
The best section of the book is his chapter on foodstuffs. Between my frequent visits to truck stops and my time in North Carolina, I know from disgusting "food" products, but Lukas outdoes any processed meat food product I've seen. There's Guycan Corned Mutton, whose first two ingredients are "Cooked mutton" and "mutton." And I won't even go into "Creamy Head." I was reading this on the airplane on the way back from Albuquerque, and I started laughing so hard that people were giving me dirty looks (it was 6:00 a.m. and they were trying to sleep), so I had to put the book away, but I still kept picturing the "pouting" sheep on the Guycan Corned Mutton, which got me giggling again...
Anyway, many of Lukas' articles are online,
but I recommend that you buy the book, because I want to encourage him
as much as possible. I sort of doubt you'd find it at a
bookstore,
but it's definitely available online.
David
Sedaris' books in general
Me Talk Pretty One Day (reviewed
Mon, 29 May 2000).
Me happy when me find
out David Sedaris has a new book of essays. My father and brother
will appreciate this one in particular, because about half the essays
deal
with Sedaris's life in France. I especially loved the ones about
obnoxious American tourists and the vast number of repertory movie
theaters
in Paris (when he talked about how, in Parisian theaters, the entire
audience
sits and watches the movie without talking, I fell into a trance of
envy).
The funniest stories are about his family, especially his younger
brother
Paul, who calls himself The Rooster, and his sister Amy, who you might
know from her show on Comedy Central, "Strangers with Candy." If
you've seen that show, the stories in this book will explain A
LOT.
My favorite vignette is how she got herself made up for a magazine
shoot
to look like somebody had beaten the crap out of her, with fake bruises
and stitches. She wore this look while running errands after the
photo shoot: "Most people nervously looked away, but on the rare
occasions someone would ask what happened, my sister would smile as
brightly
as possible, saying, 'I'm in love. Can you believe it? I'm
finally, totally in love, and I feel great.'"
Dress Your Family in Corduroy
and Denim. You have to read this book if only for the
piece about how the Dutch celebrate Christmas. Also good is the
one where his sister begs him not to put an embarrassing story in his
book, and his response is, "Why not? You're not using it."
New York
Diaries
by Danny Drennan
I have "Beverly Hills 90210" to thank for discovering Danny
Drennan. See, he used to write a summary of the
"90210" episode each week that soon became the only reason I kept
watching the show (never you mind why I started watching in the first
place). On the same site, he posted brief, hilarious, bitter
essays about life in New York, which are now in this book. He's a
terrifically entertaining writer, and I owe a great deal of my style to
him.
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa
Puffs
by Chuck Klosterman
Reviewed Tue, 8 Mar 2005
This is my latest discovery, more funny essays, this time
mostly about pop culture (deconstructing "Saved by the Bell,"
describing the difference between Lakers people and Celtics people,
pondering the Rapture). He gets a little tedious sometimes, but
he's very funny. One of my coworkers is fascinated by the set of
questions Klosterman says he poses to "everyone I meet in order to
decide if I can really love
them."
Last Days of Summer
by Steve Kluger
Beautiful, funny, moving (yet unsentimental) epistolary novel
about the unlikely friendship between a boy and a baseball
player. Everyone I've recommended this to has loved it.
The Dogs of
Babel
by Carolyn Parkhurst
Elegant and very moving novel about a man grieving
for his wife and wondering if she committed suicide; the only witness
is his dog, so he spends his days trying to teach the dog to talk so he
can finally learn the truth. Parkhurst makes you feel the giddy
rush of infatuation and the black depths of despair with equal skill.
Anything by Tim Cahill,
humorist and travel writer extraordinaire
Why not Al Franken? He's got the essential ingredient to being a Democratic president -- an embarrassing brother (his favors assault with a 2x4). So what if he really only grasps one issue -- ATM fees. He rides a wave of popular discontent (helped by a Y2K disaster) to become the first Jewish president -- and is booted from office a mere 144 days later (even more ignominiously, he's the subject of a Bob Woodward expose). Why Not Me? is the story of how he did it.
Most of this smart satire is a faux diary (which he's
repeatedly warned
by his advisors not to keep because it could be subpoenaed). The
best parts are his hand-written notes on various meetings:
* selecting a political consultant: "James Carville: Give that act a rest, buddy! It's tired. No."* studying past debates in preparation for his: "Ford: Poland, independent & autonomous. Carter: Poland NOT independent & autonomous.... Bentsen: was friend of Jack Kennedy. Quayle: feelings hurt."
* a briefing on the issues: "Environment: Earth, children, legacy, Ted Danson"
He combines the wisdom of James Carville and Tip O'Neill to come up with his slogan: "All politics is the local economy, stupid!" And his campaign commercials are classic -- as his campaign is funded primarily by the insurance industry (and a lesbian coed phone sex line), he borrows characters from Met Life/"Peanuts" to create heart-tugging commercials with titles like "Weeping Snoopy" and "The Death of Linus."
What kicks this above the level of most political satire is that, as he demonstrated in Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, Franken knows his stuff. There are a few miscalculations that were probably entirely logical when he wrote this, such as having Dick Gephardt and Newt Gingrich in their respective primaries -- he actually comes up with a Gingrich-Armey GOP ticket -- as if! (less understandable is his blaming bad weather on El Niño, which he should have known wouldn't still be around in 1999. But I'm probably the only person who would notice something like that). But he eerily presages the "niggardly" brouhaha by making a bad Hiroshima joke about "a nip in the air" -- one of the phrases editorial writers facetiously fretted would be taboo in the wake of "niggardly."
If it sounds like I'm giving away the best parts, trust me, I'm not. There's billions of other jokes, though I think inside-the-Beltway folks will get more of the humor than real Americans -- it helps to know who people like Ed Rollins, Paul Gigot, and Frank Luntz are. But I think everyone will get his mockeries of Al Gore, Clarence Thomas, Ted Kennedy, and other shooting-fish-in-a-barrel targets.
Bonus: It makes you laugh out loud on the Metro, which can often sound like psychotic giggling, which tends to keep people from sitting next to you. (Downside is that it doesn't deter actual psychos from sitting next to you.)
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