LISTMANIA!:
OTHER BOOKS USEFUL
(OR NOT) FOR AMERICANS
TO READ, BEYOND
WILLIAM BLUM'S
ROGUE STATE,
BY OSAMA B-L.
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The Five People You Meet in Heaven
BY MITCH ALBOM
Even accepting the irrational premise that the afterlife is populated by five people who explain the meaning of your life to you, and not by 72 nubile virgins attending to your every whim, I still could have scratched out a better book on my wall with a sharp flint. I read Tuesdays With Morrie a few years ago and was, against my better judgment, moved, so I purchased athletic-games journalist Albom's novel; sometimes I, too, succumb to the onslaught of vapid temptations from the Jewish-owned media. Prose so facile I suspect every paragraph was focus-grouped by craven publisher Hyperion, a division of the imperialist Walt Disney Corporation; characters as wafer-thin as feeble-minded Bush the Scion's grasp on foreign policy; and a plot saccharine enough to nauseate even American children raised on sugary junk foodstuffs and jingoism. Fellow word-lovers duped into reading this propagandistic pabulum, take heart: I will seek personal vengeance and see to it that Albom meets his five people very soon. (Apologies to those who reside in or around the Detroit area.)
Prep
BY CURTIS SITTENFELD
"Know thy enemy," they say, and I was curious to see how the coddled spawn of heathen Western capitalists are force-fed their ideological cants in your inferior and counterfeit class-stratified educational system. Little did I know that Sittenfeld would create a richly detailed boarding-school world, praise Allah, through the sympathetic, pitch-perfect voice of oppressed underclass pupil Lee Fiora. I am someone who never felt comfortable in his turban throughout his teen years, and Lee's self-conscious angst returned me to that confusing age, when the only jihad one is waging is against oneself. A devastating critique of how materialism poisons adolescence, and, by extension, the neoconservative strategy of pre-emptive warfare.
Tales From Margaritaville
BY JIMMY BUFFETT
A trusted aide mistakenly included this in a package along with some coded correspondence and a West Coast metropolis's topographical layout. I did not realize it was separate from our glorious 12-point plan until I was halfway through, and by then I was hooked on Buffett's unique voice. Apparently, he is a minstrel known for his songs about the forbidden fruits of alcohol and women, the province of the lecher-butcher Clinton. Regardless, this collection of stories about dreamers and nomads shall be appended to the Al Qaeda recruitment manual for mujahideen. After reading Buffett's work, you, too, will consider yourself a loyal "Parrotbrain."
The Da Vinci Code
BY DAN BROWN
I know, I know. But even the mightiest holy warrior has his limits. My appraisal: highly entertaining, praise Allah, and a scathing indictment of the two-millennium-old sham that is Judeo-Christianity. I still would not be caught dead reading it in public, but that is not a major concern for me, anyway.
Life of Pi
BY YANN MARTEL
I needed a few more dollars in my shopping cart to receive free Super Saver Shipping from the entrepreneurial vultures of Amazon, so this ended up costing very little: the best six dollars I ever rerouted from my joint Swiss bank account with Halliburton. I deeply identified with Pi's Cheney-like isolation on his seaborne raft; reading it, I at times wished I had a Bengal tiger for company, instead of three armed former military generals sleeping in shifts who have pledged their children's lives to my safety. As one might expect from such a brilliant English-language novel, the author is a Canadian who has spent time in Iran and Turkey and therefore assuredly denounces the putrid sewage of American culture.
The Notebook
BY NICHOLAS SPARKS
Full disclosure: I saw the motion picture first, on an old camcorder I use for rehearsal videos and a generator-powered VCR, and by the time the credits were rolling, the viewfinder was opaque from the tears. McAdams and Gosling, praise Allah, have the chemistry of Mohammed and myself, and the lush cinematography from Robert Fraisse of hypocritical France conjures up visions of Paradise. After witnessing dissolute Hollywood make a strong adaptation for once, I found the book less successful, like the foolhardy plans of the ruthless occupier Wolfowitz.
The Devil Wears Prada
BY LAUREN WEISBERGER
From the title I thought it was a Bulgakov-style fabulist allegory about the inexorable march of American commercialism to its own sinful demise, but I soon found myself enraptured by this deliciously bitchy roman à clef. Vogue's profligate Anna Wintour, in all her self-serving monomania, is derided as a tyrant of Rumsfeldian proportions. Manolo Blahniks? Tall lattes? Gwyneth Paltrow? Though I do not exactly know what these things are, I could generally figure it out from the context. The Qur'an of chick lit.
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
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Listmania!: Other Books Useful (or Not) for Americans to Read, Beyond William Blum's Rogue State, by Osama B-L By Teddy Wayne
Movie Reviews by the City of Los Angeles Itself By Nathaniel Missildine
The Pretentious 17-Year-Old's Guide to Dating By Jeff Barnosky
Troubling Tyra Mails Censored From Aired Episodes of America's Next Top Model By D.J. Kirkbride
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