Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge, by Mark Yarm. I know the hipsters on this sports board are too damn cool for these bands, so blow me, ya clowns. I keep thinking it was compiled by Mark *Arm*. Anyway, fun to page through. As much as Buzz Osbourne hates the media, he doesn't ever seem to turn down an interview. It's an oral history, so it is easy to read and re-read and just flip through.

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Tanto and the Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, by Sherman Alexie. Short stories. I read a long time ago, but am reading it now. Uneven, but worth it.

The Great Gatsby gets better each time I read it.

Is Hussra still posting? Unfortunately, I don't think he is. He gives good recommendations & hand-jobs.

Warren Newson? I need something different.

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I am just finishing up Witness about Whitaker Chambers. It is boring.

Going to move onto Abundance by Ezra Klein. His interview with Lex has me intrigued.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I can't help you with the hand-job. Also, this list is complicated by the fact that the last two real good books I read (Sacred Hunger and The Narrow Road to the Deep North) you recommended to me. But, here goes:

1. There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland, Steven Hyden- I have vague memories of the Born in the U.S.A tour, largely because of that car accident that killed seven kids from Joliet, but I didn't get into Springsteen until his Greatest Hits album was released in 1995. Therefore, I was too young and too disinterested to really appreciate Born in the U.S.A., in context, in the mid 80's. This book definitely gave me some context. If you're a Bruce fan, it might be worth checking out.

2. The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, Timothy Egan- part natural history, part travelogue, part political science commentary. It's filled with unusual facts. Did you know that, before the advent of dams, salmon used to make it all the way from the Pacific to Idaho to spawn and die? Also, it's an older book so, while it does have some political commentary, it's not crazy or heavy handed.

3. Solomon Gursky Was Here, Mordecai Richler- this is an absolute hot mess of a book, but provided a pretty enjoyable reading experience. Very Jewish, very Canadian.

4. The Voyage of the Narwhal, Andrea Barrett- a fictional account of a doomed polar expedition from the mid 19th century. Good characters and a lot of good natural history. I thought about this book more than once when reading Sacred Hunger.

5. Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder- I detested philosophy when I was an undergrad and have been regretting it ever since. A fun, very meta, fictional survey of all of the great philosophers of Western Civilization. I decided to keep the book just so I could open it up and get a thumb nail sketch of a philosopher if I need it.