BOOKWORMED

This may be surprising but I don't read books very often these days. It's not that I don't like books - I luh books. In fact, bookstores are by far, my favorite kind of store,much more than record stores.  But books require an investment in time (at least in my own mind) that I rarely feel like I have time for. That said, when I got memed on the book tip, I was game to blow the dust off my shelves and tap into my inner, dormant bibliophile.

1. One book that changed my life: Another Country by James Baldwin.

It's no secret that Baldwin's non-fiction work, especially his essays, were a large reason why I ever wanted to write to begin with: his ability to articulate ideas about justice, humanity, anger and love moved me to want to study the craft that he mastered so well. But reading this novel - the first work of long fiction by Baldwin I had ever sat down with - was a revelation of how incredibly deep both his genius and compassion ran.

Just to note, if you really want to talk about a work of art that changed my life, it's not a book. It's an album. But we'll leave that for another meme.

2. One book you have read more than once: Executive Orders by Tom Clancy.

This may surprise some folks given that Clancy's not-so-subtle right-wing, hyper-jingoism isn't exactly aligned with my personal politics but I have to say, as a work of pulp fiction, set within an amazingly complex (but well-integrated) yarn about politics, terrorism and warfare, this book really holds up, especially in a post-9/11 world where reality now - tragically - exceeds fiction in many ways. At the very least, it's a very good beach book.

3. One book you would want on a desert island: Ugh, I've always hated "desert island" questions since it presumes that I'd be able to arrive at some concept of "the best book ever" when, in my reality, that might change from day to day. If I were on a desert island, for serious? I'd bring...a blank journal since I imagine, in that situation, I'd rather jot down my own thoughts than read someone else's.

4. One book that made you laugh: 'Toons For Our Times by Berke Breathed.

I stumbled on this at a library in Pasadena when I was in junior high and let's just say: it's wasn't like Peanuts. I had never read Doonesbury and even if Breathed was obviously drawing upon Trudeau's ouvre, I still appreciate the keener, absurdist (yet topical) humor that Bloom County brought. Opus = one of the best characters ever but Bill the Cat had my young self uncontrollably LOLing (before, of course, I knew what LOL meant).

5. One book that made you cry: Still waiting.

6. One book that you wish you had written: ego trip's Book of Rap Lists.

For one thing, it's so unabashedly nerded out that I can automatically identify with it. But it's also an amazing love letter to what hip-hop brings out of even the most cynical of its paramours.

Honorable Mention: Can't Stop, Won't Stop by Jeff Chang.

It's such a definitive and remarkable text looking at the rich depths of specific hip-hop histories that it pretty much kills my interest in ever writing a similar kind of hip-hop history book. Besides, me and Jeff get confused for each other so often, I feel like I could almost take credit for having written it.

7. One book you wish you had never written: I might have to bite this one from Daddy In a Strangeland and agree: Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internment. When Ronald Reagan - not exactly either 1) a progressive nor 2) someone to cower to public pressure - apologizes for the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, you just accept that, "hey, America f***ed up" and finding something else to rant about. I'm sure her sequel, Slavery Misunderstood is sure to be even better.

8. One book you are currently reading: Pipe Dream Blues by Clarence Lusane.

I'm teaching a class on social problems this semester and I want to spend a few weeks on drug policy. Lusane's book - written in 1991, half a decade before Gary Webb's infamous "Dark Alliance" articles for the SJ Mercury - is a compelling argument around the relationship between American drug policy and anti-Black racism. He, like Webb would do later, argues that the CIA was a major facilitator of how drugs moved into the U.S. but even if you contest that point, his discussion and analysis of the history of narcotics in the inner city - and its adverse, disastrous effects on communities therein - are hard to argue against especially 15 years later when we see what the post-crack legacy has been. His discussion of the heroin trade is especially fascinating given the kind of structural organization existed to facilitate the importation and distribution of heroin.

Honorable Mention: The Whole Equation by David Thompson.

I picked this up after a friend raved about it and it's a very engaging and insightful history of Hollywood that mixes excursions into biography, geography, city planning and cultural analysis. It's even more apropos considering that I now live within 10 minutes of Hollywood, land o' where people where velour sweat suits and Uggs. (Not a good look personified).

9. One book I've been meaning to read: Angry Black White Boy by Adam Mansbach.

The fact that I haven't read this yet is ironic on a few levels, not the least of which is that I made a mix-CD to go with the book. Adam's a good friend and he had asked me to create a mix of pro-Black hip-hop anthems to go with his book about a militant white boy trying to destroy White Supremacy (with unintended consequences). The thing is: I don't read fiction very much and his book has been one of those, "I'll definitely get to it soon" tomes that continue to patiently await my attention. What's funny is that since I was on tour with Adam, I've heard him breakdown his book's main points so many times I kind of feel like I actually have read it.

Honorable Mention: Uh, I have a stack about floor to ceiling of books I've bought over the last x-number of years that I've been meaning to read. (Don't ask about my CD stack, it's even worse). 

10. Who I tagged: Junichi, Jeff, Hua and Jon.

--O.W.