1. Have a Little Faith: A True Story, by Mitch Albom.
I don’t really read “Mitch Albom,” and don’t understand “his journey,” or his “outlook,” or what he’s “about.” I do know, however, that the employees of Second Story Books in Dupont Circle refuse to buy review copies of Mitch Albom books. Now, doesn’t that kinda/sorta make you want to read them?

2. Under the Dome, by Stephen King. Since I have read every single Stephen King book, I can no longer pretend that I don’t know this book exists and won’t read it. It all started back in 1989 when my mother pointed to a shelf of classic Stephen King novels—It, The Stand, Salem’s Lot, etc.—and warned me that I was not old enough to read them. But what was in these banned books? What mysterious and curiosities lurked therein? Just a lot of gore, and sex, and run-on sentences.

3. Say You’re One of Them, by Uwem Akpam. Oprah’s Book Club strikes again. Everybody pony up $15 to be part of the national conversation.

4. The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Impending Currency Crisis with Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments, by Charles Goyette.
I’m an economic contrarian. That is, I go against that crowd. That’s a way to make a dollar, mister. When they’re selling low, buy. When they’re buying high, sell. But wait—if everyone reads this book and follows its advice, won’t I have to be a counter-contrarian to be a contrarian? Goddammit. Come on—does anyone really understand economics? Let’s go drive up to the Borgata poker room and get $300 in the pink-chip game.

5. unSweetined, by Jodie Sweetin.
An ironically-titled tell-all by a former Full House-cast member? Don’t walk, run….no, don’t run, fly…no, don’t fly, beam…no, don’t beam, transport…no, don’t…well, just take a fucking submarine to the bookstore if you need to.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C., held an old-fashioned book burning last week (above is an AP video on the same).

Now, my people didn’t burn books when I was growing up, but my youth pastor did ask me to toss my copy of Pyromania, and my grandfather, an Episcopal priest, refused to allow books written by Carl Jung inside his house. Also, I once had to scribble an ode to masturbation on a slip of paper during mass and throw it into a cauldron of fire.

Based on these criteria, I feel qualified to offer the following FAQ for attending a book burning.

Is it OK to swing by the grocery store on my way to the burning and just buy a new book? Or should I bring something from home?

Serious book burning is as much about purging one’s soul of evil influence as purging America’s retail shelves of the same. That said, only bring a book from home if you’re sure that fellow congregates have read it, or skimmed the dust jacket in a moment of doubt. A book burning is a family event, not a chance for you to strut your perversions.

If the only irreligious book you have at home is Madonna’s Sex, leave it there and pick up the new Dan Brown book on your way to the burning. Otherwise, your pastor will think you are making a mockery of the entire thing.

I have a lot of dog books at home, and not much else. Should I burn my dog books?

Novels about people who form emotional connections with their dogs are fucking disgusting, and the Lord will not abide. Where the Red Fern Grows? Go ahead and roast the copy you read to your kids. Your fellow burners have probably read these books too, and as such, are just as on the fence about it as you are. Remember: It’s one thing to use a dog for sexual pleasure, it’s an entirely different and unholy thing to write a book about it. Same goes for Shiloh, My Dog Skip, and–my personal favorite–the Lad series. Burn them all.

I really want to bring my friends to a book burning, but I’m worried that they’ll think I’m crazy. What should I do?

Ask your friends if they have ever touched a hot stove, perhaps a cookie sheet fresh out of the oven, or a warm drill bit. If they say yes, ask them if they can imagine what it would be like to feel that pain for an eternity. Then tell them about the book burning and its importance to you. Remind them that good friends should be GGG–good, giving, and God-fearing.

And remember: You are crazy–crazy for the eternal truth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Setting things on fire arouses me. Should I feel bad about enjoying a book burning in a way that my fellow congregates would likely disapprove of if they knew?

Yes.

Some people in my congregation have suggested that we simply burn a Barnes and Noble bookstore to the ground. What do you think of this idea?

That is a foolish idea. It would be much wiser to find the warehouse from which Barnes and Noble ships its stock of Dan Brown books and light that place on fire.

I am functionally illiterate. Can I bring a DVD or VHS instead?

Yes, so long as it does not star Charleston Heston or Kirk Cameron.

1. Good Eats: The Early Years, by Alton Brown
I had a housemate who loved Alton Brown. Absolutely loved him. Would stay up until 2 a.m. to watch him on the Food Network. Funny thing was, this housemate was a chef. An actual, real chef, who worked at a fancy restaurant for like 10 or 12 hours and then came home to Alton Brown. I never understood that. I thought a “real” food guy would admire a “real” chef—someone I, who am not particularly interested in food, probably had never heard of—not a TV chef with a kitschy food show that was considered “for foodies” only by people who watched Rachael Ray or Top Chef and weren’t sweating it out every goddamn day in an actual gritty working kitchen somewhere. But, it turns out that this real-life chef loved this fake TV-chef more than any other real chefs he actually knew in real life. Just goes to show you: you think you’ve got life figured out, then it throws ya a curve ball.

2. Changing My Mind, by Zadie Smith
People love Zadie Smith. White Teeth, On Beauty—Zadie writes ‘em, folks buy ‘em. Unfortunately, I’ve only read The Autograph Man, which I liked, but most people hate, and I’ve heard Smith disowned. Then, I did some research and learned she actually disowned White Teeth. But I can’t keep track of who disowned what, or who likes what. I just read.

3. Open: An Autobiography, by Andre Agassi
Did you hear about that guy who didn’t want to read a vaguely Zen tennis autobiography by a sexy, bald man who used to date Barbra Streisand? What a douche.

4. When the Game was Ours, by Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson Jr., and Jackie MacMullan
Oh, wait—I thought this book was co-authored by Larry Bird and Julius Erving (a.k.a. Dr. J) and was a celebration of the Apple IIe game One on One. Guess it’s about something else. Still, pretty good stuff.

5. South of Broad, by Pat Conroy
I checked this book out because I’m from Philadelphia and I thought it was about Philadelphia, specifically South Philadelphia (”South of Broad,” get it?). Turns out it’s about Charleston, S.C. and, according to Amazon.com, “features Appalachian orphans…a black football coach’s son…and an astonishingly beautiful pair of twins, Sheba and Trevor Poe, who are evading their psychotic father.” All right, Pat Conroy, you’ve still got my attention. Keep talking.

Just in time for Halloween comes creationist and cool dude Mike Huckabee’s jolly Christmas memoir…

God, what a snarky intro. Tough to write about this because, as an agnostic (how can anybody be anything else?), I don’t like to knock those who believe One Tuff Jew died and rose again in ye olde ancient times. Then again, Christ rarely helps me when I’m drawing to an inside straight, or when I’m trying to make a straight flush to beat another player’s obvious nut flush, and he certainly never helps me make a higher straight flush against a lower straight flush which, as He should know, would be a hand that would qualify for the bad beat jackpot in most American poker rooms.

So, rather than spew some jokey vitriol about Huckabee, I’d rather present five nuggets of received wisdom I unearthed whilst skimming A Simple Christmas. So, if you hate Huckabee, you can smile at how stupid these nuggets are and, if you like Huckabee, you can appreciate the fuck out of this blog post because I’ve done the hard work for you.

1. “[God] had sent prophets, given very explicit written instructions, and even blurted out some pretty loud pronouncements on top of mountains…but even though His voice was probably even louder than an Aerosmith concert, people kept being, well, people.” (xix)

2. “…the Huckabee side of the family originated in England, around the Liverpool area, and the name means ‘people of the hill.’…I was hoping I might be related to Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, or Ringo Starr, but if there’s any connection, they have long since paid to cover it up.” (56)

3. “I…had Fender build a Jazz Bass exactly like the one I had when I was a teenager. They sit side by side next to my desk now, and seeing them makes me feel seventeen all over again. Then I stand up and realize I’m not seventeen!” (31 – emphasis and exclamation point in original).

4. “…the fact that I had graduated from high school made me the Starship Enterprise of my family – I had gone where no one man had gone before.” (177)

5. [...was going to take something from chapter about's Huckabee's wife's battle with cancer, but it's actually pretty intense.]

1. Che: A Graphic Biography, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon.
As previously discussed, I’m not much for graphic novels, but it’s pretty cool to stare at drawings of Ernesto Guevera and Fidel Castro plotting strategy in the Sierra Maestra. Do you think Castro knows this book exists? If he does, he must think it’s pretty fucking weird. How would you feel if you saw a comic book of a war you fought? Then again, maybe you’re a really laid back hippie-type. Maybe you’d think it was no big deal.

2. How to Be Inappropriate, by Daniel Nester.
Okay: there is a very high chance that, like this guy, this book will be annoying, but some chance—I’m not saying a great chance, but a measurable, extant chance—that this book will be sort of funny. Who’s ready to gamble?

3. How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood, by William J. Mann.
Emmanuel Lewis, Macaulay Culkin, Jay Leno: so many people who used to be famous were friends with Michael Jackson. This is a book about one of them.

4. Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes, by Will Self.
I can never remember if Will Self is a novelist, or a journalist, or a gonzo journalist, or a gonzo novelist, or just gonzo, and I worry that, if I read this short-story collection that seems to be about drinking and drugs or, at least, heavily influenced by drinking and drugs, I still wouldn’t be able to remember.

5. Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government, by Glenn Beck.
Alien invaders: let me be the first to welcome you to Spaceship Earth. Here, on Earth, there are six billion human inhabitants. These six billion individuals think six billion different ways about themselves, their world, their god(s), their fates, the struggles they face, their trials and tribulations, what does or doesn’t turn them on, and whether or not Paranormal Activity really is a good movie. Though the complex behavior and diverse beliefs of these six billion Earthlings can’t be predicted or explained by any known system, all Earthlings have been divided into two camps by the corporate media to further its own financial interests: 1) the “liberal” camp, and 2) the “conservative” camp. Mr. Beck has graciously agreed to brief you on the worldview of the second.

1. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, by Lydia Davis.
Don’t bother studying the jpeg—this book has a really, really intense neon-orange cover which cannot be reproduced on your computer screen. In fact, I wouldn’t have glanced at this book twice if not for its excruciatingly-tinted dust jacket. However, once I did take a second look, I found that MacArthur Fellow Lydia Davis writes brutal, minimalist prose that is the aesthetic equivalent of that dust jacket’s punishing, unrelenting slice of the ROYGBIV frequency spectrum.

2. Going Rogue: An American Life, by Sarah Palin.
Why not?

3. Peter & Max: A Fables Novel, by Bill Willingham.
Goth fairy tales + illustrations – pretensions to “graphic novelhood” = sign me up.

4. Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women, by Marnia Lazreg. You know how new atheism is sorta cool, but that, after reading some self-important Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkinstomes, you kinda wanna believe in God again just to be a contrarian fuck? In a similar way, I expect this book that would convince Muslim women not to wear veils would convince me that they should wear veils. But, then again, I’m not a Muslim woman, nor have I read this book.

5. A Boardwalk Story, by J. Louis Yampolsky.
There’s not much popular or critically-acclaimed art made in, around, or about Atlantic City. Well, there’s the Bruce Springsteen song “Atlantic City,”and the Burt Lancanster movie Atlantic City, and the Jack Nicholson movie “The King of Marvin Gardens.” But, face it: though good bands occasionally play the Borgata, Max’s Kansas City has probably impacted our culture more than Atlantic City. However, I like things that don’t impact culture. That’s why I want to read a debut novel about Atlantic City by a retired accountant.

1. The Wild Things (Fur-Covered Edition), by Dave Eggers.

Another in adventure in meta by postmodernist Dave Eggers, this novelization of high modernist Maurice Sendak’s ubiquitous children’s book is also based on a screenplay for the recent film that Eggers wrote with postmodernist Spike Jonze. I’d read this because I like things that are meta, and because I like things that are covered in fur.

2. The Best American Essays 2009, edited by Mary Oliver.
I often buy, but rarely read, books in the “The Best” series published every year. (”The Best American Short Stories,” “The Best American Science and Nature Writing,” “The Best American Sports Writing,” etc.) I’m never sure what’s in them, but they look good on the bookshelf, and make me feel intelligent which, really, is what books are for.

3. Chronic City, by Jonathan Lethem.
Jonathan Lethem’s written a bunch of books I’ve never read, but I always see in people’s apartments in Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Green Point. Though I’m not interested in the Brooklyn Renaissance (can we call the decade-long Brooklyn cultural explosion a Renaissance yet?), I am interested in alliteration, and boy, is this book’s title alliterated (alliterative? alliteral?).

4. War Dances, by Sherman Alexie.
Sherman Alexie is responsible for one bad movie, but publishes good, emo stories in the New Yorker and is Native American and, though it’s not politically correct to say or think so, Native Americans are cool.

5. American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot, by Craig Ferguson.
Aren’t you at least a little curious to read about this talk show host/former Drew Carey Show star’s alcoholism and suicide attempt? He’s one of those guys who seems like a douchebag, but, if he really is a douchebag, is probably a cool douchebag.

Edgar Allan Poe, alcoholic inventor of Gothic literature, died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. Charm City commemorates the 160th anniversary of his death this week. But what does Poe have in common with David Simon, Baltimore native and creator of HBO’s “The Wire?”

Edgar Allen Poe: Deliberately sought court-martial at West Point to pursue career as a visionary writer. “I have no energy left, nor health,” he wrote his guardian. “I shall neglect my studies and duties at the institution.”
David Simon: Left the Baltimore Sun to pursue career as a visionary TV series creator. “I got out of journalism because some sons of bitches bought my newspaper and it stopped being fun,” he told the Baltimore City Paper.

EAP: Won acclaim for “MS. Found in a Bottle,” a sea-adventure tale that, according to biographer Kenneth Silverman, “creates a sustained crescendo of ever-building dread in the face of ever-stranger and ever-more-imminent catastrophe.”
DS: Won acclaim for Homicide, a non-fiction book and television show that celebrates the human ability overcome the catastrophe that is murder. “[It's] very much a celebration of the human spirit under pressure,” Simon told the Baltimore City Paper.

EAP: Set the standard for compelling Gothic literature with the poem “The Raven,” in which an unnamed narrator is tormented by an eerie bird. “Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore,” Poe wrote. “Tell me what the lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore./Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
DS: Set the standard for compelling cable television on Season 4 of The Wire, in which serial murderers Chris and Snoop torment the enemies of druglord Marlo Stanfield with eerie apathy. “When you think of Chris and Snoop, think of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, only smart,” Stephen King wrote. “And with a nail gun.”

EAP: Died in Baltimore after a bender with, according to onlookers, a look of “vacant stupidity.”
DS: Concluded the final season of the The Wire with a bender of sloganeering against anti-corporate journalism that, according to some critics, was stupid.

The F-Word
By Jesse Sheidlower
Oxford University Press
$16.95

Ed. Note: the following post contains a number of naughty words, including Fuck, Cunt, and Goat. If there’s a toddler on your lap, best to blindfold him or her before reading any further.

Having read Erika’s post on the third edition of The F-Word, I was cheered to discover a copy in my mailbox this weekend. “What fun,” I thought, admiring its sleek, unsuggestive firetruck-red jacket, its blurb from Steven Pinker (”You’ll never hear the F-word in the same way again”), and the Henry IV Part II quotation that opens the volume (”‘Tis needful that the most immodest word / Be looked upon and learned”). Also of note: a curiously restrained foreword from Lewis Black (guess we all grow up a bit when the OED comes a-calling); eight (8) pages on variants of the word frig; and a note on “new inclusions” in this edition:

The dictionary text is about twice as large as the Second Edition, and well over 100 new words and senses have been added…. Examples {…} include CUNT-FUCK noun, which previously had only a single quotation from 1998, from a Usenet newsgroup devoted to erotic stories, but has now been expanded into a full-fledged entry, with four quotations covering the range of 1879 to 2002; FUCKWITTED adjective, previously part of FUCKWIT noun but now on its own; FUGLY noun, separated from the adjective; and SPORT FUCK noun, upgraded from the verb.

You get the gist. Of course, what might make a great coffee-table book for Ari Gold is probably just re-gift fodder for the rest of us. Before I unload my copy on an unsuspecting family member (Aunt Penny, you reading this?), allow me to share a number of crucial inclusions (full glosses omitted):

ACRONYMS {FUCKRONYMS?} I HAVE NO PLANS TO USE:

• DILLIGAF interjection
  “do I look like I give a fuck?”
• FTN interjection
  “Fuck the Navy.”
• HMFIC
  “Head motherfucker in charge”*

EVENTS THAT I HAVE NO PLANS TO ATTEND:

• fuckerware party noun [FUCK + (Tupp)erware party]
  Especially Homosexuals. a gathering of women for the group use or purchase of sexual toys.
• goat fuck noun
  Especially Military. a fiasco; mess; CLUSTERFUCK. Also (euphemistically) goat dance, goat screw, goat rope.
• fuck-your-buddy week noun
  Especially Military. a hypothetical period during which betrayal and exploitation of one’s friends is supposedly encouraged. Compare BUDDY-FUCK.

THE DEPT. OF REDUNDANCY DEPT.:

• cunt-fuck noun
  a sexual act involving the vagina, esp. an act of heterosexual vaginal intercourse.

*OK, might use that one.

Think of all the truly awesome things that Merge Records has accomplished in its 20-year existence. Not only has the label—founded in the late ’80s by Superchunk members Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan—released countless 7″ singles, LPs, and at least one boxed-set by myriad worthy artists, but they’ve pulled off a few truly improbable feats. Merge basically invented the tolerable use of brass in indie-rock. Before Neutral Milk Hotel, the best you could get was June of 44’s Fred Erskine playing balloon-on-scalp-style free jazz trumpet. The label also put out countless Lambchop records, even though Europeans were the only people who listened to them.

But most remarkably, Merge has grown into a widely successful record label in the most humble and respectable way possible—keeping their business personable, modest, and honest. Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, an oral history assembled by John Cook alongside Ballance and McCaughan, tells the label’s story through countless photographs, fliers, and extensive interviews. Washington City Paper recently spoke with McCaughan, who will be reading selections from the book tonight at Crooked Beat.

Q&A after the jump:

Washington City Paper: When did you decide that Merge was finally ready for the book treatment?

Mac McCaughan: We started talking about it a year and a half ago, maybe even longer than that. It was the idea of an old friend of mine who works in publishing. He’s not even that into music, he just thought the story of the label was interesting.

We were a little skeptical, though. Being in the middle of the label it’s hard to see what the dramatic arc of a book would be. There were no dramatic moments in our history where we almost went out of business. We were never teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. It’s always just been this slow steady thing. But once I read the proposal, I was a little more into it. It put the history of Merge in the context of the music business as a whole, in contrast to the major labels. That made a lot of sense then.

WCP: What made you decide to make it an oral history, instead of a more conventional narrative?

McCaughan: It didn’t start out as an oral history. I guess once John [Cook] started doing the writing and organization of the book, it became clear that it was too hard to incorporate as many quotes as he wanted into standard format. Also, I love oral histories. I love reading them.

WCP: In the beginning, Superchunk record sales basically drove Merge, sort of in the way Fugazi’s sales and reputation drive Dischord. When did that start to flip-flop? When did the label become an established entity independent of your band?

McCaughan: It was a little bit of a gradual thing. It kind of happened once we started putting out full-length records. We put out the Superchunk record On the Mouth and we put out the first two Polvo albums. That changed the label in terms of perceptions in how it had to function. After that we hired our first full time employee. Another shift was putting out bands that were from outside of North Carolina—Magnetic Fields, the 3Ds.

WCP: Was that it a difficult decision to move beyond just releasing records out of the local scene?

McCaughan: That wasn’t a hard decision at all. It was exciting for us. And even before we did albums we did a 7” by The Renderers. That was really exciting, too. But once we were doing albums that opened us up. If you were Claudia [Gonson] and Stephin [Merritt, both of Magnetic Fields] you could see Merge as a legit label. But I think that really the transition came in the mid-90s. By that point Merge was a label and not just Superchunk’s label. And certainly by the time of 69 Love Songs and Neutral Milk Hotel came out, in the late ’90s.

But yeah, I don’t think that you can pinpoint a couple of big turning points or a couple of big decisions that caused it all. It was just a general approach to business and music. When we were starting out one of the things that kept us going was that we weren’t trying to have the label be our job. We were putting out records because we loved music and the label never had to be anything. Even after we started having a staff and selling more records I think we still tried to keep that approach. There were labels that started around the same time that thought, “Well, if we’re a label we need to have this kind of office and have these people working there.” To us, that seemed like a backward way of looking at it. The label was going to become what it was going to become.

Even though we’ve put out records in the last few years that have sold a lot more than we ever could have imagined selling 10 years ago and certainly 20 years ago, I still feel like we operate on a different level than a major label. When people talk to me about the music business…I kind of think that we’re in different music business than they are. If we’re putting out and Arcade Fire or a Spoon record, sure, we certainly have to do some things to keep up with that. But we try to have the flexibility to do a good job with a record that’s only going to sell 3000 copies, too.

WCP: There’s some pretty personal stuff in this book, specifically the details about your breakup with Laura [Balance, bassist of Superchunk and co-founder of Merge]—was it difficult to be forthcoming about that stuff?

McCaughan: Well, I mean, it certainly wasn’t fun to maybe talk about that or read about it. But if you’re going to write the book, tell the story. Don’t gloss over the difficult parts. I mean, if I’m reading a book I want to feel like people are being honest.

WCP: Were there things that you learned from reading other people’s interviews that you didn’t know before?

McCaughan: There’s a lot I learned about the history of some of the bands. Bands like Spoon, that had a long history before we started working with them and how close they came to breaking up or stopping all together, I didn’t know some of that stuff. I learned a lot about Jeff Mangum and his friend’s history in Ruston. Also, you learn stuff about the way other people perceive you.

WCP: There are a few bands—like Lambchop—that Merge has stuck behind for quite a few albums, even though they don’t sell very well. Has keeping them around ever been a tough call?

McCaughan: It may be hard for the bands to stick with us, but not hard for us to stick with them. Lambchop specifically–every record they make is a masterpiece. If you’re an indie label and you’re putting out a record, you must love it. So it can be frustrating when something doesn’t do as well as you think it should. But no, it’s not hard to stay with those bands. They’re still making music that we love.

Mac McCaughan reads from Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records
October 5th @ 6PM
Crooked Beat
2318 18th St. NW