uggabugga





Monday, September 13, 2004

The Ego-Meter:

Amazon.com has a set of short interviews with nine authors about current events (mostly related to the election). We took a look, paying attention to which authors recommended their own books (and how many). Here are the results. Self-recommended books are in yellow boxes.

Author Q: What are the top five books you'd recommend to become an informed voter? And what can your new book contribute?
Patrick Buchanan Where the Right Went Wrong The Great Betrayal Pete Peterson's
Running on Empty
James Bamford's
A Pretext for War
John O'Neill's
Unfit for Command
Ann Coulter High Crimes and Misdemeanors Slander Treason How to Talk to a Liberal The Bible
Al Franken Molly Ivins'
Bushwhacked
Paul Krugman's
The Great Unraveling
Ron Suskind's
The Price of Loyalty
Joe Conason's
Big Lies
The South Beach Diet
David Frum The Right Man Bernard Lewis'
What Went Wrong?
Richard Miniter's
Losing Bin Laden
John Kerry's
The New War
Kanan Makiya's
Republic of Fear
Arianna Huffington MoveOn.org's 50 Ways to Love Your Country Bill Maher's
When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden
Bob Woodward's
Plan of Attack
Joe Palermo's
In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy
The 9/11 Commission Report
Molly Ivins Who Let the Dogs In? David Cay Johnston's
Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign
to Rig Our Tax System ...
Hendrik Hertzberg's
Politics: Observations and Arguments
Thomas Frank's
What's the Matter with Kansas?
Paul Krugman's
excellent The Great Unraveling
Jon Stewart Gabriel Garcia Marquez's
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Thomas Pynchon's
Gravity's Rainbow
Leonard Nimoy's
Warmed by Love
Thomas Mann's
The Magic Mountain
James Joyce's
Finnegans Wake by
Gore Vidal Burr Lincoln Inventing a Nation United States Constitution  
Bob Woodward Plan of Attack Bush at War John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by The Boston Globe Reporters John Kerry's
A Call to Service
The 9/11 Commission Report


For a while it looked like conservatives were much more likely to flog their own works when compared to liberals. But Gore Vidal, to nobody's surprise, came in second to Ann Coulter and, just to be different, decided only to recommend four books - the last "book" being the United States Constitution (similar to Coulter's last choice of the Bible).

Thanks Mr. Vidal, you've done it again!


6 comments

Am I the only one who misread ``Pretext for War'' as ``Pretzel for War''?

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9/13/2004 3:30 AM  

Vidal's a genius. Although he's been branded a crackpot by the right and held at arm's length by the left as though he were a beloved but embarassing old uncle in the attic, he's been almost alone in calling things as he sees them, and time has more often than not proven him right.
If he wants to recommend his own books, then by God, Gore, have at it!

By Blogger Riggsveda, at 9/13/2004 7:56 AM  

Frum recommends Republic of Fear?!

You could buy a dozen copies of that book for a cool 75 cents.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9/14/2004 8:52 AM  

I'm thinking Ann's recommending the Bible as her fifth book because she doesn't know the names of any other books. It's clear, from what she's said elsewhere about Christianity, among other things, that she doesn't know the first thing about what's actually in the Bible.

By Blogger delagar, at 9/16/2004 9:30 AM  

Ann's ego is so tame. Putting the Bible _after_ four of her own works.

I thought Gravity's Rainbow was just too gross, but Stewart's book selection rocks for its difficulty rating.

Should I read Mann's Magic Mountain.. hmmm

By Blogger JoshSN, at 9/18/2004 10:26 AM  

The book that has made me laugh the most, apart from the collected works of Bill O'Reilly, and that has foretold in hilarious fashion various twists of the campaign is THE DICK CHENEY CODE by Henry Beard, author of "O.J.'s Legal Pad" and "Where's Saddam?" It parodies THE DA VINCI CODE and nails the bizarre thinking of the White House, political evangelicals, et al. Suffice it to say that the strange code "uggabugga" is used to skewer Bush and his henchmen, Skull & Bones is secretly breached, and Geronimo's skull is liberated. And that's only a subplot.

Cheney in the emergency ops center in the White House basement:

The last screen in the line had the FOX Channel. They were already running Cheney's doctored footage of Senator John Kerry using a flaming American flag to set fire to a pile of Bibles. The news crawl at the bottom of the screen was the same one the public saw, but this special classified version had all the outright lies circled in red.

Cheney crossed the room to a spaceship-style metal door. He gave the ancient ritual knock first used almost five centuries earlier....

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9/24/2004 9:24 AM  

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