Ed. Julia Wertz
I Saw You
Three Rivers Press
7/10
Ever wanted to know what it’s like to be one of the thousands of Craigslist posters who pine for lost opportunities in Missed Connections? Julia Wertz does. The New York-based cartoonist has had more than a few “d’oh”’ moments over the years- inspired by her own missed connections, Wertz has gathered up a modest list of them and brought them to life- with the help of a few friends, of course. The result, I Saw You, is a tender, heartwarming tribute …

Vera Ramone King
Poisoned Heart: I Married Dee Dee Ramone (The Ramones Years)
Phoenix Books
6/10
Vera Ramone King’s Poisoned Heart recounts the story of the author’s tumultuous relationship with the Ramones’ core songwriter, Dee Dee Ramone. While the book has some unique and interesting insights into life behind the scenes in the lives of its subjects, it is plagued by repetitive passages and clichés.
I heard the book portrayed Dee Dee Ramone in such a negative light that his estate tried to prevent its release. This fact probably built more hype around …

Mohsin Hamid
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Harcourt, Inc.
8/10
Some of you who have read the interview with Rachel Taylor Brown may have picked up on a reference to one or two major books. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is one of them. Written by a Pakistani émigré living in London, the novel is widely considered to be one of the first post-9/11 novels written from a Muslim point of view. It is also one of the more painfully honest works written since the Twin Towers collapsed (Towelhead by Alicia Erian, is another). …

The Pocket Wine Encyclopedia
Eds. Danielle Daggett, Fiona Doig, Alan Edwards, Kate Etherington, Mary Halbmeyer
Barnes and Noble
8/10
It’s no secret that everybody likes to get happy. For some of us, that mean a nice stem glass and a bottle of red (or white, depending on whatever is preferable) and sitting on a couch in the living room, patio or even a laptop. But not all wines are the same. According to the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants, there are over 600 red wines and 800 white ones, …

Japanese Goth
Tiffany Godoy & Ivan Vartanian
Universe Publishing
4/10
What I expected to be a history of Japanese Goth culture was simply a picture book. From creepy ass dolls to hot (but probably underage) chicks in Alice In Wonderland type dresses, Japanese Goth allows pedophiles to view manifestations of all of their fucked up school girl fantasies. If you are not a sexual deviant, it’s an interesting insight into a subculture that I have no knowledge of whatsoever. So, overall, interesting, but weird and slightly perverted.
–Jonathan Yost

The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles
Edited by Jeff Martin
Soft Skull Press
9/10
As I have been a retail employee for the last decade, I relate to a vast majority of the stories of asshole customers, incompetent leadership and dicking off on the company dime. From humorous bits of being locked in the store to a rookie’s failure to close down a boutique shop, The Retail Chronicles sufficiently capture the quiet debilitation of a retail employees self esteem. Whether you are a current or ex-retail employee, or even a …

Zombie Haiku
Ryan Mekum
How Books
8/10
A book of haikus
But from zombies’ point of view
That’s pretty badass.
–Jonathan Yost

Dead in Desemboque
Eddy Robert Arellano
Soft Skull Press
8/10
Spanish class, why do you fail me now? Three years of español and a quarter of français and little result to prove my work- I still can’t read a historieta (a Mexican style of comic book). Eddy Robert Arellano’s Dead in Desemboque is surreal and beautiful- and partially in Spanish.
Despite my language barriers, the story is interesting, strange, and at times comical- Eddy travels across the desert with his horse and his two dogs, amidst womanly trickery, a bounty on his head, and …

ReVamped
J.F. Lewis
Simon and Schuster
3/10
I’m not really sure why, but I love bad sci-fi and fantasy. Movies, books, comics, whatever, give it to me, and I’ll devour it. Wizards, werewolfs, the whole lot of them. I especially dig a good vampire story- from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to turning into a vampire means I MUST sprout a mullet-type fiction (I’m looking at you Keifer). J. F. Lewis is no exception to the rule; as bad as 2008’s Staked was, I still loved it. I read and re-read the thing, reveling the …

Douglas Coupland
Eleanor Rigby
Bloomsbury Publishing
8/10
The subject of loneliness- especially in the context of romance or life in general- is not one that publishers like their authors to dwell on, especially in America, the land that gave birth to the “Hollywood ending.” Perhaps that is why it took a Canadian, Douglas Coupland, to render the reality of being alone in its complex, sad and gritty detail- a task which he does brilliantly in what may possibly be the greatest novel of his career. The fact that the book is titled Eleanor Rigby …

Save Me From Myself/ Washed By Blood
Brian “Head” Welch
HarperOne Publishing
3/10

Wow. What a complete middle finger to fans of Brian “Head” Welch. If you have been in college, then you know this racket:
Your English class requires the 10th edition of a book. The tenth edition is $100 while the 9th edition you can get used for $15. What’s the difference? The chapters are in a different order and the study questions are different, but honestly, how much has the English language changed in the past year? Head, formerly of …

Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
Grove Press, New York
9/10
This book is a fantastic read. It tells the story of the forefathers, birth and downfall of the first wave (and probably the only pure wave) of punk in the form of a nearly chronological collection of interviews from the people who made the scene themselves. The Tale begins with Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground and moves right through Detroit with Iggy and Wayne Kramer, New York’s scene surrounding Max’s Kansas City and …

Dreaming of Gwen Stefani
Evan Mandery
IG Publishing
8/10
Over the last several years, there’s been a glut of middle-brow novels centered around, and obsessed with, pop culture. The Autograph Man, Welcome to Yesterday, even Bill Gaston’s lofty sounding, but headache inducing novel The Cameraman. All had snark, all had oomph. What they lacked was…well, meat. Intellectual meat, and not only that, they tended to run fairly long, like a three hour epic running at a multiplex in Chapel Hill. None of this describes Evan Mandery’s …

Neil Gaiman
The Graveyard Book
Harper Collins
9/10
Beautifully illustrated, delightfully creepy, wonderfully written- Neil Gaiman has done it again. His love of the macabre has transcended into yet another novel depicting otherworldly happenings. The Graveyard Book is a tale of a boy, orphaned at a young age, and adopted by a graveyard. Gaiman uses his delectable talent to spin a coming of age tale in an unlikely place.
Nobody Owens doesn’t know where he came from, or why someone is out to get him. His adoptive parents found him in the graveyard as a …

The Lucky Guide to Mastering Any Style
Kim France and Andrea Linett
Penguin Group
10/10 Frilly, fancy, and fabulous points
(5/10 serious ones)
I interrupt your regularly scheduled metal and mayhem to bring you something strange and foreign- fashion! Fabulous!
Firstly, I must offer you my apologies and admit something- I wasn’t thinking of our readers when I first saw this gem in Lucky magazine. I was thinking of me me me, and how my most guilty pleasure in life is thumbing through pages of iconic styles and beautiful clothes I feel that I can …

Free Range Chickens
Simon Rich
Random House
7/10
Brief, bizarre, and hysterical- this is the world of Free Range Chickens. Brought to you by one of SNL’s finest writers Simon Rich, Free Range Chickens is a tiny book full of large laughs and one liners that will have you reciting bits until your friends disown you. Though it is only 176 pages long, the book covers all the basics: youth, adolescence, adulthood, and Dracula (“You come to castle.”). A little bit of everything, and a whole lot of nothing. Interesting bits include “I think …