Deric's Picks

Want to get pissed off? Read this book. With the Gonzoesque approach that made his initial Rolling Stone article a viral sensation, Taibbi tackles the grifter class. All are here, from Alan Greenspan (a.k.a. "the biggest asshole in the universe"), the sub-prime bundling bastards behind the economic collapse, through the short-term budget filling flops who leased out all the parking meters in Chicago to the Arab Emirates for the next 75 years (it's no longer free to park on Sundays or holidays within the city limits). A fast read that will undoubtedly leave you frustrated with our broken system.

Written in reference to Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, this philosophical deconstruction of our post-postmodern society articulates the need for a nonviolent insurrection and how the apathy and desire for irony has caused generation "why" to be unsure of their cause. If you read it once, you will read it again. If more people from my generation read books, ironically, this book may never have been written. Instead, the history of a new counterculture -- or perhaps a political ideology -- would have been written. It still can be. Although for it to happen as a way of propelling justice, we've got to face how rejecting the establishment feels like it's now a part of the establishment. We've got to understand how abolishing all values cannot become the only thing we value.

Italy, summer of 1970. The plot tensely unfolds around four young friends and their torrid love affairs. As the story continues we see the protagonist, Kieth, through three marriages and fatherhood. The cliche of this seemingly shallow plot are used as a humorous parody of English novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, which works solely because the prose is so brilliantly constructed. A pleasure to read simply for the countless stand-alone sentences that fill its pages.

There are two authors with enormous bodies of work that I've set out to read everything by: George Orwell and Christopher Hitchens. This memoir is less about Hitchens' life and more the events that led to his often contradicting political and philosophical perspectives. From getting spanked on the bum by Margaret Thatcher, to playing word games with Salman Rushdie, this book is full of entertaining glimpses into the passionate yet playful mind of one of the worlds greatest polemicists. The chapter about his mother is perhaps one of Hitchens' best pieces.

Have you ever had someone ask you if they can ask you a question? Did you fight the impulse to inform them that they just have, or did you politely say, "yes?" Would you enjoy a novel completely written in questions? If so, would such a book be better read in a public place such as a cafe, hospital, or while sitting on a crowded tram between a bickering couple? Would you prefer to read in solitude, or would you rather graft yourself onto a couch, sit astutely in a favorite chair, or hunker under a dim lamp with the memory of your ex-lover sleeping silently beside you as you turn those pages? Do you enjoy these conversations with yourself?