(High rez version)

Attention corporate literary behemoths: I can be available to visit bookstores around the world for your YouTube clip.

On the whole, I enjoyed the new book.  It seems to be a more serious book, but is often just as hilarious as his previous books.  Fans of the The Rooster, Sedaris’ brother, will be sad to learn that the family hillbilly makes only a passing appearance in this book.  Most of the stories seem to focus on regrets, missed opportunities, and less happy times.  However, there is one story - and it seems that each of his books has one - that fails miserably.  Skip What I Learned, you’ll thank me later.

The last story, The Smoking Section,  is 83 pages long!  Most of the author’s tales are significantly less than 10 pages.  At 80+ pages, It’s not quite a full length memoir - but it’s also longer than an autobiographical essay, too.  Unsure of what to call it, I’m coining what I think is a new word - a memoirlito.  The memorilito is the story of Sedaris’ attempts to quit smoking.  By moving to Japan for an extended period.  It’s like a Marx Brothers film crossed with Lost in Translation.  Funny and weirdly awkward.  I hope to see more in the memoirlito form from Sedaris in the future.

If you’re a fan of Sedaris, you’re likely to already have read it.  I don’t know that there is anything here (maybe the memoirlito) to convert non-fans to the Sedaris cause.  Either way, I enjoyed his latest, and I’m looking forward to the next one.

That one word under “bands” let’s you know that this is a serious place for the discussion of books.

Author appearance highlights:

• Karen Abbott - Sin in the Second City
• John Bemelmans Marciano - author of the first new Madeline book in 50 years (grandson of the original author)
• Douglas Blackmon - Slavery by Another Name
• Roy Blount, Jr.
• Rick Bragg - The Prince of Frogtown
• Robert Olen Butler - Intercourse (bonus: opportunity to ask about that e-mail)
• Doug Crandell - The Flawless Skin of Ugly People and Hairdos of the Mildly Depressed
• Doreen Cronin - Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type
• Hollis Gillespie - Bleachy Haired Honky Bitch
• Rheta Grimsley Johnson - Poor Man’s Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana (Wait?! Poor man’s who in the what now?)
• Jed Horne - New Orleans journalist and author
• Jennifer 8 Lee - The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
• ZZ Packer  - One of Granta’s Top Young American Novelists
• Jack Pendarvis - Awesome
• Andy Runton - Owly books (!)
• Laurel Snyder - poet, children’s author, and a local
• Natasha Trethewey - Pulitzer-winning poet

Those are some of the names that jumped out at me on first glance.  See the complete list to find your must-see authors.  We’ll have more to come as we get closer.

This book, a bestseller in Europe, is a fascinating study of human nature. The story is set in a non-profit organization that studies and disseminates information on genocide. This organization is only staffed by 5 employees and when a couple of them receive a death threat - the dynamics within their little office quickly spiral downhill.

Their first thought is that one of the war criminals that they have been tracking down is threatening them but through the irrationality of human nature, they quickly turn on each other. Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of one of the employees which allows the reader to see how the same incident or situation can be interpreted completely differently by each of the characters within the novel.

The 4 women who are central to the book all have their own personal histories and tragedies. One was bullied as a child, one has a debilitating arthritic disease, one was taken hostage in Africa while working for an aid organization and the last one had serious relationship issues. These personal histories all play a large part in how they react to the death threats and how they start to become suspicious of each other and end up forming factions within their own organization.

What is so ironic about their deteriorating relationship is that these are women that study the psychology of genocide and what causes rational people to commit murder and atrocious crimes; yet, they end up demonstrating many of the same behaviors which they study. They use their subject knowledge to further their own suspicions rather than taking a step back and becoming aware that their actions mirror many of the abhorrent behaviors during genocide.

The unraveling of who sent the death threats takes many twists and turns and the author leaves you in suspense until the very end and even then does not positively solve the mystery for you.

I also admired the way that Jungersen used his setting to educate the reader about genocide. I learned so much about the various genocides that have occurred during the 20th century as well as the psychological studies about group think and behaviors in these situations. There were a few studies described that I already knew about such as the Stanford Prison Experiment in which college students volunteered for a study and 1/2 are prisoners and 1/2 are guards.  Within days the prisoners became passive, depressed, and despairing while the guards became agressive, callous and hostile. There were no significant personality differences between the 2 groups at the beginning of the experiment but it demonstrated that people act according to the roles given to them by external forces.  There were many other experiments and studies that Jungersen described that I found fascinating.

The Exception was educational, thought provoking, entertaining, and a real page-turner. And it accomplishes all this even though it is set in Denmark and translated into English. Kudos to Jungersen - not an easy feat.

I’ve been told for years that I absolutely had to read Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad.  No fewer than a dozen people have recommended it to me since it came out in 2001. I finally relented when there were two recommendations in the same week: another thumbs up from a friend and Largehearted Boy’s review.  I found a used hardcover first edition for under $2 the same week. Game on.

I think that my initial, years long reluctance to read the highly recommended book was based purely on ego.  My high school and college years fit neatly into the book’s time frame with some cushion of either end.  In college, I was a DJ at my university’s station, and I was Music Director my senior year.  The reasoning, I think,  was that I would quibble, find fault, and otherwise be underwhelmed.  What could this book teach me that I didn’t already know?  Plenty, as it turns out.  Perspective for starters.

The book begins in 1981.  It was the first year of that sumbitch Reagan’ s presidency, and the year that the first records were released by what would become seminal bands.  The history ends in 1991, because that was the year that Nirvana’s Never Mind came out and the indie music scene was validated beyond its wildest dreams.  In between those years, a handful of bands blazed a new path and created some very influential music.  Azerrad chronicles the stories of thirteen bands in this rich music history.

The highlighted bands are diverse in the styles of the music that they created (though they are all, essentially, guys with guitars), but all had a strong do it yourself ethic.   They formed their own bands, and often, rather than wait for the big record deal that was never coming, they formed their own labels.  Then they signed their friends’ bands.  Many of these labels (SST, Sub Pop, Dischord, K Records) are still around.

We didn’t want to be just a rock band,” says singer-bassist Mike Watt.  We wanted to be us - our band.” In the process D. Boon, George Hurley, and Watt proved that regular Joes could make great art, a concept that reverberated throughout indie rock ever after.

They did their own promotions, booked their own gigs, lugged their own equipment, and  anything else that rock stars usually delegate to underlings.  They also believed in themselves enough to pile into a van full of equipment and sweaty guys to play their music wherever they could.

One of the things that I didn’t realize before reading OBCBL is that before these bands came along and started knocking on doors, there were almost no venues for small indie bands to play.  They shared their contacts and names of friendly venues across the country.  I’ve always taken it for granted that there were always places in my town for small, mostly unknown bands to play.

As it turned out, I didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did.  There was even a band that I had never really heard before.  Through Azerrad’s telling, I was able to enjoy the bands that I was familiar with in a whole new light.  I read this book at the beach with my iPod in hand.  I highly recommend that approach.

OBCBYL is an exhaustive (and it must be said, sometimes exhausting) history of the movement, weighing in at over 500 pages.  More than anything though, OBCBYL is inspiring.  It presents one case study after another of people who decided that they wanted to created their own scene - and did it with varying degrees of success.  The take home message of this book is that if you love something, get out there and do it.  Get whatever you care about out in front of as many people as you can.  If you’re truly in it for the love, the doing will be its own reward.

Do I need to say that I loved this book? If you are an indie music nerd, this is required reading.  Buy the hard cover so that you can put in on your reference shelf.

Of course, this post screams for some streaming audio.   Below are selected tracks from some of the bands featured in OBCBYL:

Minutemen - History Lesson Part II (provides the title of the book)

Mission of Burma - Academy Fight Song

Replacements - Bastards of Young

Husker Du - Could You be the One

Sonic Youth - 100%

Fugazi - Waiting Room

Beat Happening - You Turn Me On

Butthole Surfers - I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas

Minutemen - D’s Road Song/Anxious Mo-Fo

If you’re a fan of the music, the book, or both, I highly recommend the documentary We Jam Econo - The Story of the Minutemen.  Many of the key players of OBCBYL show up to tell their stories.  Many thanks to Shaft for putting it in my hands until I finally watched it, minutes after finishing this book.

The first is a new independent publisher, Mercury Retrograde Press.  From their web site:

Mercury Retrograde Press publishes fantasy, science fiction, and the unclassifiable: fiction that propels the reader through unknown territories in this world and others unlike it. Here you will find complex characters and compelling stories: an alchemical blend of the sense of wonder we all crave with the hard edges and tough questions that thinking readers need.

MRP’s first book is Shorn by Larissa N. Niec.  There is a launch party for the book and the press this Saturday night at Wordsmiths.  Show some love.

The second local indie venture that has wandered onto my radar (via Criminal Records) is P is for Panda Records.  The label is celebrating their first release on July 25 with a shindig at The Highland Inn Ballroom that will include live performances and an art sale to benefit the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation (you’ll remember Valentino from Dave Egger’s What is the What).   Check out P is for Panda for the full scoop