Best American Non-Required Reading 2005

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Foreword by Mr. Eggers, with much stuff about 826 Valencia and the people who were on the editorial board for the book (more interesting to me now that I am trying to be on the editorial board for the 826 Quarterly) and Intro by Beck.
A lot of great stuff here - I recommend it - I liked "The Death of Mustango Salvajie" by Jessica Anthony, about a female bullfighter. And Al Franken has a piece here about his USO Tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, called "Tearaway Burkas and Tinplate Menorahs".

It was also fun to read in combo with "Firebirds" and "The Green Glass Sea" and thinking about writing for teens/young adults in general.

Who Let the Dogs In? by Molly Ivins

This was hilarious! I think I bought it in one of the many frenzies of book buying at Keplers recently.
She covers almost my entire living memory of American politics, from Carter up to the present Shrub. It was fun to read her recent essays, but even better to read her take on the past as well.
Even better, the stories on Bush senior, who I do not remember as being as entertaining as his son. Make sure you read her recollection of when Bush regaled listeners by telling the thrilling tale of the gladiator who bit a lion in the balls!

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

I love reading Nick Hornby's work (High Fidelity, About a Boy, How to Be Good) and in this book I get to read about what _he's_ reading.

This is a collection of columns from The Believer magazine: "A Hilarious and True Account of One Man's Struggle with the Monthly Tide of the Books he's Bought and the Books He's Been Meaning To Read."

It's like his book/CD package: "Songbook" in that you get to peek into his reading appetite and see where it goes. I especially like looking in the "Books Bought" column for one month and then looking to see if he ever actually read that book later on. He did buy a couple books that I also have, most of which he didn't yet get to!

"I'm beginning to see that our appetite for books is the same as our appetite for food, that our brain tells us when we need the literary equivalent of salads or chocolate, or meat and potatoes."

Hornby also said "I hate Amazon reviewers, even the nice ones..." so I was going to go post a review on Amazon that just says something like "Hornby hates Amazon reviewers so I'm not going to review this book. But I loved it."

Seeing that there are already at least 12 Amazon reviews and at least one of them alluded to the "hate reviewers" comment - I kept quiet.