Bob Schildgen - Hey Mr. Green: Sierra Magazine’s Answer Guy Tackles Your Toughest Green Living Questions (2008, Sierra Club/Counterpoint)
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Which is worse — paper or plastic? Can an ecologically conscious person eat guilt-free meat or fish? And, God help us, what’s the most eco-friendly brand of gasoline to buy? As anyone who’s devoted more than a few moments of thought to living a greener lifestyle can tell you, it’s no longer as simple as going out and hugging a tree; even the most well-meaning consumer decisions can wind up having unintended effects, and sometimes making a change is worse than doing nothing at all.

Bob Schildgen — otherwise known as Sierra Magazine’s Answer Guy — is here to help. As subscribers already know, Schildgen has spent the last several years answering questions from concerned readers, many of which are collected in the pages of Hey Mr. Green. The best thing about the book, happily, is Schildgen himself — his writing style is nicely down-to-earth, as shown in the book’s introduction, where he jokes about fulfilling a dream of having a book on top of toilet tanks across America. His answers to these questions also tend to be much more pragmatic than you might expect from someone calling himself Mr. Green: More than once, he waves off a reader’s concerns about, say, the amount of energy it takes to transport Alaskan salmon across the country with well-founded cost analysis arguments. Schildgen’s aim is not to make you feel like the world is about to end, but to point you in the right direction for responsible — and easily achievable — living.

At 216 pages, Hey Mr. Green is pleasantly breezy, and what it lacks in encyclopedic depth, it makes up with breadth; it’s also exactly the right size for those toilet tanks Schildgen jokes about in his introduction, and at just over $10 for the paperback, it’s a great gift for the eco-conscious acquaintance in your life or office. But don’t stop there — funny, informative, and never preachy, Hey Mr. Green also makes for an instantly compelling introduction to the green liftestyle, and it’s thin enough to slip under the windshield wiper of that vanity-plated Hummer in your parking lot. Order up a few copies today.

So you say that your finances are under more pressure than Rod Blagojevich and you still have gifts to buy for the holidays? Join the club. When you think about it, books make a really sensible gift. In addition to providing hours of pleasure for your loved ones, they cost very little in the scheme of things, and with online discounters like Amazon offering free shipping for orders over $25, well, it’s somewhat of a no-brainer. I completed most of my list last week by spending less than ten minutes online, and the order arrived at my door two days later. No malls. No lines. No parking nightmares.

This year there are a lot of good book options for the music lovers in your life. None of the books that appear here cost more than $30 on Amazon, and most are considerably less expensive. There are coffee table books, and interesting biographies. Know someone who is not that interested in music? I’ve provided some good choices for them as well, with a couple of excellent novels, a wise and witty look at the first colonists of this country, and a biography of one of the pre-eminent journalists of the last half-century.

The books are listed in order of genre, not preference. Without further ado, here are my gift choices.

Coffee Table Books

The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey and Passions - by Quincy Jones

It’s good to have friends, and Q has a lot of them. Before his own recollections even begin, there are introductory valedictories from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Bono, Clint Eastwood, and Maya Angelou. This beautifully put together volume provides extraordinary access to a man who has been at the forefront of the music business for decades, working with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson. There are private notebooks, correspondence, and photographs, along with reproductions of report cards, track sheets, and accounting ledgers. (more…)

Jeff Martin (Editor) - The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles (2008, Soft Skull)
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I’ve been lucky enough not to have had to wear any paper hats, but like most citizens of the industrialized world, I have stepped behind a couple of retail counters in my day — and although I had those jobs a long time ago, the memories are still fresh, and I read the Jeff Martin-edited anthology The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles with great interest, looking for hints of my past in other writers’ experiences. I never really found any, but it’s an enjoyable read nonetheless.

Martin’s compilation is slim (under 200 pages) and lacks the involvement of any “name” writers (slight exceptions: Neal Pollack, who wrote the foreword, and Jim DeRogatis, who is a legendary music critic and therefore probably doesn’t count), both of which are unfortunate, because retail life is one of the few remaining common threads that bind us all together, and I think this could have been a slam dunk of nonfiction humor if it had been put together a little differently. As it is, The Customer Is Always Wrong is a solidly unassuming read, good for a few chuckles here and there, but far from a definitive statement on the wild, wonderful world of ritual pain and humiliation that is waiting on the consumptive masses.

The book consists of 22 brief essays from writers such as Richard Cox, Hollis Gillespie, and Elaine Viets, all of whom tell their stories with the sort of bemused detachment that comes with the relative certainty that you will never again need to experience the things you’re talking about — and also, it bears mentioning that most of the stories included in this volume treat retail work as a positive experience, more or less, which is an opinion clearly not shared by a sizeable percentage of the people working retail at this very moment, and may, in fact, not jibe with your own memories of being a “sales associate.”

Still, even if The Retail Chronicles fails to really stab at the ink-black heart of the retail experience — in fact, some of the writers Martin chose are a little obnoxious — that doesn’t mean it isn’t frequently a lot of fun, or worth following up with a second volume. And at under $10.50 new, it’ll make a pleasant addition to the bathroom book basket, or a nice holiday gift for a friend who doesn’t rate a major purchase. Damning with faint praise? Perhaps, but I’m still looking forward to The Customer Is Still Wrong: The Retail Chronicles II.

Danny Goldberg - Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business (2008)
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Most rock & roll memoirs are penned either by rock stars themselves (Clapton, Dylan) or by the original titans of the industry (Ertegun, Yetnikoff), and as our pal Pete Lubin discovered when he tried peddling his own account of his life in the biz, there’s a reason for this: The number of people who purchase books filled with rock-geek trivia — shit, the number of people who purchase books period — is woefully small. It’s surprising, then, to see Gotham taking a flier on an autobiography from Danny Goldberg — but as you’ll quickly discover if you pick up a copy, it’s quite a pleasant surprise.

Goldberg, for the non-geeks among us, was one of the biggest seat-hoppers in the game of high-stakes musical chairs played by the major labels in the ’90s — and before that he was, in order of occurrence, a Billboard staffer, Led Zeppelin’s publicist (and eventual label VP), and manager to Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, and Kurt Cobain. A man with that perfect combination of dumb luck and ears for talent, in other words — and a veritable treasure trove of behind-the-scenes stories.

Sadly for readers who pick up books like this in search of juice and dirt, Bumping Into Geniuses focuses less on who did what to whom and more on how incredibly fucking awesome it is to fall in love with rock & roll, and then fall ass over elbow into one pile of money after another until you’re sitting on top of the Warner Music Group without any real idea of how it happened. I’m oversimplifying things a bit — and surely Goldberg did have a very clear grasp of how he rose so far, so fast — but that’s the basic tone of the book: It’s a gee-whiz account of Goldberg’s many brushes with greatness. (The title, by the way, comes from Ahmet Ertegun’s quip to a teenage Goldberg that the secret to success in the business is to walk around bumping into geniuses.) (more…)

Juliana Hatfield - When I Grow Up: A Memoir
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“… if you’re timid and looking for mercy, stay on the road that leads to a more compassionate world. ‘Cause this one I know will eat you up alive, brother. I mean, alive!”
—recitation by Hank Ballard, from James Brown’s Get on the Good Foot LP, 1972

Growing up in New England, Juliana Hatfield was a fixture of my music diet. While I was living there, I took it for granted that, in between her regular tours, I could catch her playing the odd solo show here or there, testing out new material that would often show up on an album sooner or later. Indeed, it was a Juliana Hatfield show that initiated my regular ritual of patronizing my favorite artists at small rock clubs. Prior to that first club show in early ’94, the only live music environments I really knew were venues with a seating capacity of at least 3,000-ish.

In 2004, I moved to San Francisco, and lucky me – Juliana was playing a show at a charming local venue called Café du Nord not too long after I touched down. It was an appropriate musical start to my new life in a new city.

But after that ’04 show, one of the two or three best Hatfield performances I had witnessed, she dropped off my radar. It wasn’t for lack of paying attention – she didn’t even make it to San Francisco on her tour in support of 2005’s Made in China, and she was pretty much off the road after that for all I knew, in spite of having released three more records after Made in China. What was up with that? (more…)

Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine - Ask a Ninja Presents: The Ninja Handbook (This Book Looks Forward to Killing You Soon)
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I suppose I should begin by saying I’ve never watched the video podcast that inspired this book, mainly because until very recently I was held in the slimy grasp of the most horrible “broadband” ISP that has ever existed, and was subject to a seriously fucked up daily download limit — but also probably because I tend to find ninjas about as funny as pirates, or pictures of kittens with poorly spelled captions, which is to say not very.

(I do, however, find Chuck Norris pretty goddamn hysterical.)

Still, when we were approached about reviewing the new paperback release of The Ninja Handbook, and Jason pussed out couldn’t take the assignment, I volunteered — partly because I wanted to know what all the hubbub was about, but also because, as one of the names behind a webzine that wishes it had publishers begging for the chance to print mass-market printed versions of its content, I wanted to see what it takes to get your site ported onto bookshelves. Also, I was insanely jealous.

And now that I’ve read The Ninja Handbook, I’m even more insanely jealous. I’m also befuddled and a little annoyed, because, to put it as simply as possible, this shit isn’t funny.

I acknowledge this is a minority opinion. Everything I’ve read about Ask a Ninja in general, and this book specifically, has been overwhelmingly positive. But while I certainly found myself chuckling in bewilderment more than once while reading the book, at no point did I ever stop wondering who in the world would spend $14.95 on it — or who would read it more than once. In fact, I strongly suspect that most of the people who find this stuff funny probably don’t spend much time reading. (more…)

Tim Etchells - The Broken World (2008)
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The Internet has been, as Chico Escuela would say, very very good to me — but still, as a general rule, I’ve never had much patience for any kind of computer-themed or virtual reality-based entertainment. I maintain that this is because most of it falls somewhere between the 1995 Sandra Bullock train wreck The Net and Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk in terms of quality, but I’m also man enough to admit that there’s a certain amount of geek-fic prejudice in there — so imagine my surprise when I found myself thoroughly engrossed in Tim Etchells’ The Broken World.

On its face, it doesn’t seem to have the makings of a successful book — it has an anonymous, not terribly likable narrator, and consists of blog entries posted as a walkthrough for the vast (fictional) game from which The Broken World takes its title — but Etchells ends up pulling it (mostly) out of the bag anyway. Even though his narrator isn’t terribly bright or motivated about anything other than the game, Etchells has a knack for pacing — the chapters are short and fast-moving, pulling the reader easily into the story, which quickly moves from the game into “real life” and back again. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone that the lines between the two start to blur after a bit — but not in the way you’d probably expect. (more…)

Over the years, my best friend and I have come up with a lot of random, idiotic games — games that we use to pass the time while waiting for more exciting things to happen, until the games themselves become the most fun event of the evening. Our games include Metal-Off, where we go back and forth naming as many hair metal bands as possible until someone pauses for more than 5 seconds, Obscure Diseases, which has the same premise as Metal-Off except with naming diseases that have really odd names, and my personal favorite, Everyone Has Their Price. My best friend used to play this game all the time, smugly challenging people to come up with awful, disgusting scenarios, and seeing how much they would have to be paid to carry them out. I “broke” the game a few years ago on a hiking trip when I came up with a scenario so repulsive to him that he had to concede defeat … but unfortunately, I can’t repeat it here.

Somehow, the two of us glossed over the Imaginary Fight game. I’m not sure how, though; we’re both into playing these ridiculous games that only seem to appeal to guys. In the case of the Everyone Has Their Price game, we enjoy getting as detailed as possible, making enough specific points to prove, indeed, that everyone has their price (until I ruined the whole thing). Thinking it over now, we were only a couple of steps away from wondering whether Rocky could beat the crap out of Rambo. We’ll never need to think about it again, though, after reading Jake Kalish’s Santa Vs. Satan: The Official Compendium of Imaginary Fights (Three Rivers Press, 2008).

If you have to ask whether a book with such a title is right for you, then it’s probably not. However, if you’re a guy, there’s a very good chance this one is right up your alley. As Kalish explains in the introduction, “The imaginary fight taps into the most primal part of the male psyche and imagination: the need to know who’s the best, the strongest, the caveman with the biggest club.” However, whereas many men would simply come up with a quick reason or two why Rambo would totally demolish Rocky, Kalish goes much, much further.

Take, for example, the contestants of the fights themselves. Surely you’ve thought of Batman v. Superman, right? I guarantee you that 90% of the fights in this book have never crossed your mind. Here are some of my favorites:

• Barney vs. Grimace
• Samurai vs. Gladiator
• Donald Duck vs. Daffy Duck

Okay, so some of these still seem relatively typical, right? Try these on for size: (more…)

Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder titled his memoir Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (1974-2001) in an attempt to sell more copies of the book. Co-written with journalist Wendy Holden, the book is more than the tell-all Felder’s former band feared when they took him to court and held up its release in litigation. In the book, he doesn’t even begin recording with the legendary group until 100 pages into it. Before that, Felder unfolds the tale of a young man growing up dirt poor in Gainesville, Florida, during the late ’60s. Literally raised in a tin roof shack, Felder’s parents were survivors of the Great Depression. Although his father could be a brute with his belt, he also encouraged Felder to pursue his gift for music. This encouragement led Felder to the guitar with which he hoped to emulate his hero B.B. King. While his older brother went to college and law school, Felder struggled to get through high school and fell in with the hippie culture of that era. Felder’s long hair and beard led to a physical altercation with his father and resulted in Felder leaving home in his late teens.

On his own, Felder kicked around Florida, befriending the late Duane Allman and hanging with his childhood buddy, Bernie Leadon. Both men would become influential figures in Felder’s life. It was Allman who inspired Felder to learn slide guitar and told him to “(c)lose your eyes and listen to the music…when your spine tingles, you’ll know it’s right.” Felder has carried these words with him ever since. Multi-instrumentalist Leadon, on the other hand, moved west to Los Angeles and gained fame with The Flying Burrito Brothers and as a founding member of the Eagles. For years, Leadon pleaded with his friend to join him and the growing musical movement on the west coast. Felder chose to toil away in New York and Boston in a band that went nowhere, and doing session work. More important to him, Felder reconnected with his high school sweetheart, Susan, fell in love and they got married. During a tour stop in Boston, Leadon finally convinced Felder and his bride to travel west. Once in California, Felder fell in with the gang at David Geffen’s Asylum Records. After a year being a sideman, he was invited to play some tracks on the Eagles’ third album, On the Border. An immediate chemistry was felt between Felder and the other band members, which included Leadon, bassist Randy Meisner, drummer/vocalist Don Henley, and guitarist/vocalist Glenn Frey. Soon thereafter, Felder was asked to join the band. Despite Leadon’s warning, Felder jumped at the chance to join an established group with two records under its belt. (more…)