The Girl Who Didn’t Know Anything About Potatoes by Luke Overthere – As the author informs us in the book’s Introduction, “There is no girl per se in this book. It’s a social history of the potato. I only put ‘girl’ in the title because that’s what sells. Every book has to have ‘girl’ in the title these days. I don’t like it, and probably you don’t either. Anyway, now you know.” As a social history of the potato, it’s not bad. As a thriller about a girl, it’s terrible. There’s no girl, and it’s not thrilling.
Who is Time Where What? by Lisa Chevy-Malibu – A self-described “renegade physicist” presents the startling thesis that “time does not exist. And neither does anything else. Okay, rocks. Rocks and trees. But that’s it.” Some chapters feature advanced mathematics, including Greek symbols and several words in Klingon. Not for beginners.
Punching Down for Jesus by Anne Koulter – The once-popular provocateur/performance sociopath reveals what has inspired her career of lies, cruelty, historical revisionism, flaunted bigotry, and reactionary propaganda—not, as one might have assumed, a desire to say or do anything in order to become rich and famous, but, rather, “my deep Christian faith.” With photographs you don’t really have to look at if you don’t want to.
How the LKJ&^^+#W’s Got Their Green Card by KLJ((&@@% – Yet another novel about an immigrant family’s encounter with the American Dream. The LKJ&^^+#W’s aren’t from around these parts; they’re from the second planet in the Tau Ceti star system. How they adapt to life in Washington Heights makes for a poignant, if sometimes anatomically confusing, tale.
People Are Crazy by Duncan Coffey – Coffey, an econometric psychologist, reveals that consumers, far from acting rationally and in conscious pursuit of satisfaction, are “out of their fucking minds. Just fucking, fucking nuts. Like fucking CRAZY nuts. People are insane. Just nuts.” It goes on like this for 342 pages. Includes graphs.
The ISIS Coloring Book by Kay Passah – Graphic artist Passah takes the puzzling, if profitable, genre of adult coloring books into new territory with this series of images of bloodthirsty jihadist terrorists, beheadings, destruction, and chaos. Not for the squeamish, the sensitive, or anybody else, really.
Nick Saltmarsh
http://tinyurl.com/n82nz6c
