As the person who started it originally <pats self on back>, I'm glad to see this topic re-started as well...
1. Just finished "Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man" written by two guys who have web sites devoted to debunking Moore's work (
www.moorelies.com and
www.mooreexposed.com.) I'm a Moore fan for the most part but it's good to read other viewpoints and this book was on the New Releases shelf at the CPL last time I stopped there so I grabbbed it.
As far as I can tell though, this book was slapped together pretty quickly (typos and grammar errors in books *really* bug me!) and re-hashes much of what is available for free on their web sites (they even re-print a few anti-Moore articles from other sources to pad the book). They include a pre-emptive strike (sound familiar?) against the as-yet-unreleased *Fahrenheit 911* as well. Of course many of their criticisms are valid - Moore is as much a propagandist as anyone on the right. He stretches the truth often and outright lies at other times. He can be hypocritical ("he's for the common man but lives in a $2 million Manhattan penthouse.") And so on.
Still, they didn't tell me anything I didn't know from visiting sites like theirs (or watching/reading Moore's work with a critical eye) but they also didn't manage to sway me that Michael Moore's a complete fraud or that his work isn't important - especially in times like these.
2. "Curious Incident of the Dog In The Nighttime"
Just finished this bestselling novel which is written from the emotionless, rational viewpoint of a 15 year old autistic boy trying to solve a murder mystery. The book is a pretty major accomplishment - it made me think of a movie like *The Sixth Sense* where, once you know the secret (not that it's hidden here), you keep waiting for the author/director to trip up. And like *The Sixth Sense*, I didn't really catch any mistakes or where he "broke character". Great how the author, a first-time novelist who worked with autistics in his earlier life, captures how autistics must see the world - order, routine, detail.
3. "Magic Circles: The Beatles In Dream and History"
As someone who combines two of my major loves by collecting books about the Beatles, I'm always excited when a new Beatle book is released. This book, which I'm halfway through, is no exception - a very academic, slightly random look at some of the lesser-studied themes in the Beatles' music (and their cultural impact in general.) It felt like I was back in college when the author puts forth a thesis like "The Beatles music symbolically and literally springs from the toilets." (They started out playing dank, dirty underground clubs and Lennon embraced this, sometimes wearing a toilet seat around his neck while playing.) Some other topics that are touched on - the leap they made with "Tomorrow Never Knows", the religious impact of John's "Bigger Than Jesus" comment, the Beatles relationship with their audiences, the "Butcher" album cover and more. I'm not done yet so I can't say if this book is successful or not. But just by taking a different viewpoint/tactic after so much has already been covered about the Beatles, the author is already part-way there.