Top 5 Books to Remind You...

As a kid, I went through all the drug abuse resistance programs a kid ought to. I still remember Officer Austin, the D.A.R.E. representative for our district. He would come in and crack a few jokes, ham it up through the mandatory all-school assemblies, and then sigh and give the boys noogies. We loved him, dearly, and every one of us promised him we would never get on his bad side.

That didn’t stop me from appreciating the irony of my classmates wearing D.A.R.E. t-shirts to school parties, and lately, I’ve heard that programs like the one I attended are going the way of the dinosaur. Legend has it that caustic contemporary wit simply makes a mockery of sincere do-gooders like Officer Austin and his cohorts. But for the parents of young children, there’s no need to fear – I have an alternative.

Make your kids watch Trainspotting. I know what you’re thinking: is that really child-appropriate? Of course not. But the moment that baby’s head spins around, any desire I ever had to try hard drugs dissipated. Follow it by reading these anti-drug submissions courtesy of staffer Eve.

Top 5 Books to Remind You to Never Get Hooked on Drugs

1. The Heroin Diaries, Nikki Sixx
2. Go Ask Alice, Anonymous
3. Tweak, Nic Sheff
4. Smack, Melvin Burgess
5. Requiem for a Dream, Hubert Selby

-Rachel

Zombies!

If you haven’t read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks, you are missing out. It has everything. Desperate battles, the near-annihilation of the human race, and, of course, zombies. World War Z is the book I recommend to every red-blooded male between the ages of 18 and 40. But when those same males inevitably return to the store looking for more of the same, I’ve always been at something of a loss. There’s nothing else quite like World War Z… luckily Eve has come to our rescue with:

Top 5 Books to Read if You’re Undead

1. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, Max Brooks
2. Empire: A Zombie Novel, David Dunwoody
3. Down the Road: A Zombie Horror Story, Bowie Ibarra
4. Plague of the Dead: The Morningstar Strain, Z. A. Recht
5. Dying to Live, Kim Paffenroth

-Rachel

Top 5 Books to Re-read and Re-discover

When I first read The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, I was about 14 years old. Reading the book, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that finally, somebody got me. Only Holden Caulfield understood how phony the rest of the world was, and he recognized how I loved my family even while I wanted to break away from them. That narrator – he was a genius.

It wasn’t until I re-read the book in college that I realized just how messed up I was as an adolescent. Holden suddenly seemed like one of the whiniest characters to ever live. He was spoiled rotten and couldn’t appreciate everything he’d been given. I was horrified that I had identified so closely with a character that was nothing like me. At least, nothing like me now.

Every time you read a book, it hits you differently. People change, and they discover different aspects to works of great literature every time they re-read them. According to Stephanie in accounts payable, these are her favorite books to read over and over again.

Top 5 Books to Reread and Rediscover

1. The Stand, Stephen King
2. Outlander, Diana Gabaldon
3. Swan Song, Robert McCammon
4. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
5. Sunshine, Robin McKinley

-Rachel

Top 5 Graphic Novels

I never read comic books when I was a kid. I didn’t have a brother and the boys on my street were more interested in video games than serials. Truthfully, it wasn’t a genre I knew anything about until I turned twelve. During an exploration of my Grandmother’s house, I discovered my father’s childhood collection of The Green Lantern.

Over the years, my love for the genre has changed. After a lot of reading, a stint working at Newbury Comics, and even a Comics as Literature course in college, I’ve realized that graphic novels appeal to everyone. After all, when you boil it down, it’s really just a great story set to art. If you know someone who loves comics or if you’d just like to rekindle a childhood addiction, here are some options for the more mature set.

Top 5 comix to make you wish you'd never given up comic books

1. La Perdida, Jessica Abel
2. Shortcomings, Adrian Tomine
3. Pocket Full of Rain, Jason
4. Pitch Black, Youme Landowne
5. Ordinary Victories, Manu Larcenet

As a bonus, there are a few books worth reading about comix and graphic novels. Check out the winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, the soon-to-be released Dream City by Brendan Short, and, a non-fiction option, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu.

-Rachel

Top 5 Cookbooks for the Impossible Child

I pride myself on being an experimental chef – I rarely make the same thing twice, and I frequently don’t need recipes. I inherited this trait, in part, from my mother. Growing up, she would experiment with all kinds of exotic, healthy foods. I grew up eating tofu, drinking soymilk, and knowing that whether you called it a chickpea or a garbanzo, it was disgusting. This early level of experimentation, however, led to some unforeseen backlash. I went into culinary withdrawal when I was about five years old, and for two full years, refused to eat anything other than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I don’t pretend to be a nutritional expert, but I do believe this must have had adverse effects on my physical development. Perhaps that is this why I stand an Amazonian 5’2” with bare feet. At the very least, it put me off peanut butter for what may prove to be the rest of my life. Which is why it is so important to have your kids eat healthy foods – but also to teach them to love them. Our staffer Eve – resident mom and children’s expert – submitted the following list of some of her favorite cookbooks to get kids eating right.

Top 5 Cookbooks for the Impossible Child

1. Deceptively Delicious, Jessica Seinfeld

2. The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals, Missy Chase Lapine

3. DK Healthy Cooking for Kids: 50 Fun Recipe Cards

4. Healthy Lunchboxes for Kids, Amanda Grant

5. One Bite Won’t Kill You: More than 200 Recipes to Tempt Even the Pickiest Kids on Earth, Ann Hodgman

-Rachel

Top 5 Solutions to Your Holiday Woes

The holidays are coming, and sometimes it’s nearly impossible to find the perfect gift. Luckily, there’s a book out there for everyone – even the people on your shopping list who hate to read. We’ve asked our staffers – who probably read more than they should – to give us some input about their favorite books. Until the holidays (and possibly a bit beyond), we’re going to publish their suggestions regularly. Check back to find out what the experts have to say about the best books on a variety of subjects – everything from cooking to zombies.

If you want to avoid the maddening crowds at the mall this Black Friday, head over to see us instead. You can get all of your holiday shopping done right here in our plaza, and we want to help you. The hoodlums at Hoodlums Music & Movies are joining in the fun and making some Top 5 Lists of their own – you can find more information about that here. Then join us in the Changing Hands community room at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, November 28 for a free screening of one of the greatest books-turned-movies of all time -- High Fidelity. We’ll talk about some of the hot new titles coming out for this gift-giving season, too.

In honor of movie night:

Top 5 Books That Actually Became Good Movies

1) High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

2) Thank You for Smoking, Christopher Buckley

3) A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

4) Oil! by Upton Sinclair

5) No Country for Old Men by Cormac Mccarthy

-Rachel

Download and Fold Your Own Poe

A little Halloween folding fun from Paper Toyz. Download E.A. Coobie by Goobeetsa here.

-Brandon

Fending Off the Offseason

“All literary men are Red Sox fans. To be a Yankee fan in literary society is to endanger your life.” - John Cheever

Arizona has become baseball country. The Diamondbacks have been competitive since their inception eleven years ago, and they’re finally drawing a respectable crowd. With the Cincinnati Reds slated to move Spring Training to Goodyear in 2010, we’ll officially split the pre-season with Florida. Glendale even lured the Dodgers away from their very own Dodgertown! Living in Phoenix, I should be in baseball heaven.

So why doesn’t it feel quite right?

I think the problem is that I grew up just outside Boston, Massachusetts. In Boston, a Red Sox hat is appropriate attire for school, a job interview, or your aunt’s wedding. The elements themselves united to challenge your fan-love. Through June, you were practically guaranteed freezing drizzle. July and August? Humidity that would drown the average desert-dweller. And by the time September and October came along, there was a decent chance you would need mittens. If you had season tickets in Boston, you would be allowed to test your mettle against every type of weather. But did we complain? Yes -- bitterly. You could hear almost as much whining in the stands as cheering. But we went anyway, dammit, and we enjoyed it.

It wasn’t just the weather, it was the stadium itself. The seats were more compacted than a car towed from Yawkey Way. It wasn’t until 2002 that the trough was replaced with urinals in the men’s bathroom. As some of my friends noted, there was an almost perpetual stench lingering over the park. But it was Fenway, and Red Sox fans united in fighting for its preservation. We weren’t just fighting for a ballpark, we were fighting for character and history. Fenway would never need a giveaway day, a sign begging for applause, or any concession to fans other than a rendition of “Dirty Water” played over the loudspeaker. The Sox have sold out more than 400 consecutive games, and in addition to the 37,000 fans inside the park, 50,000 more are lining the streets. So while I like the comfortable seats and well-manicured corridors of Chase Field, I find I miss feeling like my ballpark is held together by chewing gum and dreams. I miss rooting for a team that doesn’t have to resort to a gyrating bobcat and fancy graphic design to get the fans on their feet.

The other night, white-knuckled watching the Sox try to force Game 7 of the ALCS, a thought hit me like a wild pitch: I was unready for the season to end. What would I do with my Saturday afternoons? How else could I justify eating a giant sack of kettle corn for dinner? When else would fashion sense allow me to wear a matching hat, shirt and baseball-stitched bracelet? I decided to compile a list of my favorite baseball books (and some I’ve just been meaning to read) to be sure I could sustain myself through the long, cold baseball-free months.

NONFICTION
1. Shut Out, Howard Bryant
2. The Soul of Baseball, Joe Posnanski
3. The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship, David Halberstam
4. The Wrong Stuff, Bill Lee
5. Ball Four, Jim Bouton
6. Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series, Eliot Asinof
7. The Duke of Havana: Baseball, Cuba, and the Search for the American Dream, Steve Fainaru and Ray Sanchez

FICTION
8. Baseball: A Literary Anthology, Nicholas Dawidoff
9. The Natural, Bernard Malamud
10. Shoeless Joe, W. P. Kinsella

PICTORIALS
11. Baseball: 365 Days of Color Photographs from the Archives of Major League Baseball, Joseph Wallace
12. Baseball’s Golden Age: The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon, Neal and Constance McCabe
13. Grand Old Game: 365 Days of Baseball, Joseph Wallace
14. 100 Baseball Icons: From the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Terry
Hefferman, Kit Hinrichs and Delphine Hirasuna

CHILDREN'S (THAT ARE BEAUTIFUL ENOUGH FOR ADULTS)
15. We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, Nelson Kadir

See Live Humans Read!

The Twin Hickory Public Library celebrated Banned Books Week with a cross between a living museum diorama and a carnival side show. Volunteers sat in the display and read banned or challenged books while trying, I suspect, not to appear self-conscious. Or fall asleep.

-Brandon

(Via boingboing.)

Almond Joy

Last Saturday, writer Steve Almond appeared at the bookstore to give a reading. It’s an event that I anticipated with a level of glee that threatened my studied facade of literary snob detachment. I had to school myself to avoid unflattering comparisons to thirteen-year-old girls at their first Avril Lavigne concert. Which is why I determined not to blog about the event: I wanted to avoid looking like a sycophantic fan-girl.

Why then, you might ask, am I blogging about it now? I’m getting there.

I’ll come clean: my adoration of Steve Almond has little to do with his writing, even though I thoroughly endorse his work. My devotion is the result of living in Boston in 2006, when he made the kind of stand that most of us only fantasize about. Boston College had invited Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be their commencement speaker that year, and Almond responded by resigning his post as adjunct professor of English. He did so publicly, in an editorial that was published in the Boston Globe. And Boston -- nay, the nation -- exploded. Was it because they were so supportive of Condoleezza Rice? Polling numbers would indicate otherwise. I suspect it has more to do with Almond’s blatant disregard for his financial security or popularity: a stance I applauded even as I wrote aggressively pandering publicity pieces to pay my rent. In short, Steve Almond boasted the balls I wished desperately to grow.

I also admired him for his ability to withstand the brainwashing that seems to overwhelm everyone who comes into contact with Boston College. I personally have encountered more than one BC alumna who received a gift of breast implants upon matriculation. Allow that to sink in for a moment: their parents actually bestowed heaving, silicone-infused bosoms to their daughters to reward -- wait for it -- their hard work and intelligence. I saw brilliant girls attending BC become more concerned about Coach purses than, well, Condoleezza Rice’s official title or job performance.

Almond’s in-store appearance was everything I dreamed it could be. He ranted and mocked his audience, he elicited complaints from passersby, and he came with the New Times' recently retired Booze Pig, Colin Redding, who brought delicious, complimentary chocolate from Granny’s Chocolate Creations. I embarrassed myself by losing nerve and failing to ask an insightful question, then choked on my own tongue when I asked him to sign the books I had brought along. It was like a fairytale.

But this week, reading my freshly autographed copy of Not That You Asked, I came upon his rant “Blog Love,” in which he analyzes the role of the literary blog. In a rare moment of diplomacy, he is careful not to condemn all blogs. But he asks the basic question -- why do they exist at all? What is the purpose? Comparing himself to literary blogger and outspoken Almond critic Mark Sarvas, he writes “We both face the same doomed task: to write in an era that has turned away from the written word.”

Is this what this blog is for? A last stand against the inevitable demise of literature as we know it?

Or is it simply a forum for me to reveal the deep, abiding fan-love that ensures I will never be cool?

-Rachel