The Year in Books: Part Two

Continuing with my review of what I read in 2013 with a roundup of some of the non-fiction I read this year. I will split this into two parts because I don’t know if I will want to force this into one huge entry.

“More Baths Less Talking” Nick Hornby: A collection of essays in which Nick Hornby discusses what books he had bought and read over the past month. So this is a blog post in which I discuss a book I read that consists of an author discussing what books he read. Yeah, my head hurts just thinking about this.

“Both Flesh and Not” David Foster Wallace: I am an unabashed fan of David Foster Wallace. I will always say that he was the best writer of my generation and / or the last forty years. Sorry, amongst literary snobs I fall into that camp. While his work is not the easiest to read his non-fiction essays are probably the best way to understand just what an amazing talent he was. The way he captures and explains events and provides this clinical yet at the same time profound insight is something I’ve never encountered before. At a minimum read the title essay on Roger Federer which is the best piece of sports writing of the last twenty years.

“Life After Death” Damien Echols: A brutal, gripping and at times mind boggling true story of an innocent man who spent nearly twenty years on death row. Damien Echols was once of the West Memphis Three, a group of teenagers in Arkansas who were without a doubt innocent of the charge of murdering three children yet were railroaded and convicted based on claims of Satanism and occult beliefs when at best all they did was wear black clothing and listen to heavy metal. This is Damien’s account of his years spent on death row as well as his life before and during the trial. It is a story that will make your heart stop. A book that everyone should check out just to understand the flaws of our justice system and the fact that, unbelievably, while Damien is now out of prison he still isn’t legally free.

“The Book of Animal Ignorance” John Lloyd and John Mitchinson: If you want to waste a lot of time on YouTube search out the British panel show QI. Hosted by the legendary Stephen Fry, it consists of four British comedians who all seem to have gone to Oxford or Cambridge discussing really interesting facts from history and science. It is much more fun than my description makes it out to be. This book is a collection of some of the facts with the best being that a combination of horse and zebra is called a zorse. Personally I would have preferred Horbra just so we could have a Skank of Horbras.

“Gulp” and “My Planet” Mary Roach: This is what I would consider my light science reading. Mary Roach writes very readable articles on science without getting too technical. For example, Gulp is about everything that happens when you eat from when the food enters your mouth to when it leaves the other end with discussions on what happens physically and the strange tales of those that study this to begin with. I read things like this to relax, which is probably scary.

“Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls” David Sedaris: I’m tossing this in my non-fiction category though that is probably a bit of a stretch. I assume David Sedaris follows my rule of writing in which both my fiction and non-fiction is 75% true with the only difference being which part of the story is true. This was an easier writing rule to follow when I was single and telling embellished stories about my time in bars. Now Kim looks at what I’ve written, points out the inaccuracies and tells me that “being married to you is like dating Taylor Swift.” Sadly, that last line is a) true and b) much wittier than anything I have written over the past two years.

“Dishwasher” Pete Jordan: The tales of a man whose dream was to wash dishes in every state of the union. Also talks about his zine. Remember zines? They were like blogs before people realized that the internet existed. This, along with record stores, rotary phones and personal dignity, are going to be the items that we tell our children about as they look at us in dismay. By the way, part of this book revolves around his inability to get a dishwashing job in New Orleans. He must have been a really crappy dishwasher.

“I Wear the Black Hat” Chuck Klosterman: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Chuck Klosterman has my dream job. He just sits around, watches a lot of television, listens to music and writes long essays on pop culture in which he compares Paul Stanley to Ralph Sampson and gets paid for it. I would have focused on that as a career over electrical engineering except that no one ever told me that rambling essays that only vaguely hold together is an actual career path. This was a pretty good collection of essays that focused on the bad guys in culture including a very interesting comparison of O.J. Simpson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

“Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love” Andrew Shaffer: Pretty much self explanatory.