Top Seven:

 

Autobiography by Morrissey

This book gets the #1 spot even though actually I haven’t finished it yet. I figure you can only read a book for the first time once and I want to savor it. My girlfriend keeps all three copies we own locked in a trunk so that I won’t tear through it.

 

It is so rare that I can include human interest in this list! My girlfriend reads one copy while the other lies in readiness.

 

Turn Around Bright Eyes by Rob Sheffield

I wrote a long review here. This is a memoir about karaoke and true love.

 

Ziggyology: A Brief History of Ziggy Stardust by Simon Goddard

The author has some odd ideas, and the first 90 pages are about kabuki theater and the origin of the universe, but this is a really cool book. The conceit is that David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona was like a real person taking over Bowie’s life. There are a lot of crazy coincidences that will blow your mind. My favorite parts were 1) when Bowie finally saw the Velvet Underground live and then met Lou Reed but it turned out it wasn’t really Lou Reed at all 2) everything about Marc Bolan; he is presented as David Bowie’s doppelganger who is trying to sabotage him. Also there are some very nice photos, and the book design is gorgeous.

The cover

 

Wired Up: Glam, Proto Punk & Bubblegum European Picture Sleeves 1970-1976. ed by Mary Blount and Jeremy Thompson

A collection of insanely cool &/or indescribably weird ‘70s album covers, beautifully laid out art-book style. The pages open flat. There are some interesting short essays and interviews too. A few well-known bands are included, but the criteria is just distinctive European album cover art from a time when people would buy records based on what the sleeve looked like. My girlfriend gave me this book for Chuannukah which was great because it was something I really wanted but never would have gotten for myself.

So my girlfriend has learned how to have lucid dreams, and the next frontier is for me to mentally send her a picture while she is sleeping, which we both know is impossible but it’s fun to try. I used an image from this book for one of the pictures. This practice is very restful for me because when I wake up in the middle of the night instead of worrying about one thing and another, I can just think, “Red background, two glam Asian girls with long hair in kimono-style minidresses and silver knee high go go boots, Ride Captain Ride.” Then sometimes I fall right back to sleep.

Bowie: Album by Album by Paolo Hewitt

I debated with myself over whether or not to include this because I haven’t really read it yet, just looked at the pictures, so I wasn’t sure if it counted as a book I’ve read. Last year I didn’t include David Bowie Styles in my Best of 2012 because I only looked at the pictures. But I decided that I did read this in a coffee-table-book kind of way, even though this is more than a coffee table book. It’s just lovely.

 

Calling Dr. Laura by Nicole Georges

Fun, touching, lesbian, Portlandish graphic novel about a young woman finding out that her father is alive even though her mother said he was dead.

 

The Lost Daughter by Mary Williams

A memoir about growing up poor in a chaotic, neglectful family while her Black Panther father was imprisoned. One bright spot was going to a posh summer camp run by Jane Fonda. Mary confided in Jane Fonda about how she had been sexually assaulted, and Jane Fonda adopted her (in every sense except legally.) Mary had many adventures including working in Antarctica and running a non-profit for Sudanese “lost boys,” and then finally reconnected with her biological family. I felt there was something missing, a sense of the writer being able to sum up her whole life so far and say what it was all about, but I didn’t really care because it was interesting.

 

What Else?

 

Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road From Debt to Freedom by Ken Ilgunas

Kid pays off his college debt in three years by working in grim conditions in Alaska, then decides he can get through grad school with no debt if he lives in his van, and learns what freedom and autonomy really are.

 

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey

There was always some mystery surrounding Hainey’s father’s death, so Hainey finally decided to use his journalistic skills to uncover the truth. 

 

American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics by Dan Savage

You don’t have to agree with Dan Savage on everything to like this book. The parts that I remember best are when he has the head of the National Organization for Marriage over to his house for dinner so he can debate him, and the heartbreaking part when his mom dies.

 

Next Up: my favorite part! Best of 1913, and bonus 1813 and 2113!

In her most recent and fifth book, New York Times Best Selling Author, Jane Fonda shares her blue print for living: Prime Time. In this book, as with several of her others, Ms. Fonda delineates the interrelationships between body, mind and spirit. Her goal in writing the book is to share her evolution in life. Fonda promises readers an 'A to Z' guide to living and covers a range of topics including love, health, fitness, friendship, sex and spirit.

Fonda reveals intimate details of her childhood and three marriages in support of her operating premise that one must "look back in order to clearly see the road ahead." According to the author, she purposely made several painful decisions including the break up from her third and last husband, Ted Turner, in order to better prepare and equip herself for the second and final half of her life.
Fonda's underlying theme is best expressed by the Carl Jung quote she cites in one of the introductory chapters: "The greatest potential for growth and self realization exists in the second half of life". The author uses this quote as the underlying foundation for her discussion 'how to set the stage for the rest of your life.' Sub-topics within this theme include: 'becoming whole, a time for gathering, a time for building, etc'.

Fonda challenges readers' conception of human life by offering an alternative model to what she calls the traditional biological life pattern (depicted as an arc) which begins with childhood, peaks in middle age and declines to infirmity and death.
She offers an alternative model depicted by a rising staircase that reaches into infinity with an ever narrowing flight of stairs. According to Fonda, this alternative concept on aging shows the potential for an individual's upward progression toward 'wisdom, spiritual growth, and learning'. She believes that this progression should be viewed as a natural part of the aging and maturation processes.

Readers who are comfortable and familiar with Ms. Fonda's prior works will not be surprised at the thrust or depth of the material she presents in Prime Time. The material, as intended, is a continuum of the life lessons the author has previously presented in her other works.
The book is well written, includes pictures of Ms. Fonda, her family, her friends and husbands at the various stages of her life, and technical information and resources to support her concepts.
For those readers who may be searching for light reading, this may not be the book for you. If you are interested in learning more about concepts related to physical, emotional and spiritual growth and how they relate to the aging process, you may be intrigued by Fonda's discussions on active aging. As she points out at the conclusion of her book, commensurate with increased life expectancy rates, individuals must approach aging from a different perspective; one that can accommodate as much as an '80' year life span. And in the author's words, deciding whether to confront and prepare for these additional periods of what she calls 'second adult life time, is the challenge of this and subsequent generations.

I thoroughly enjoyed this frank and (thanks no doubt to years of therapy) insightful autobiography by a woman who has always come across to me as a bit brittle. That quality certainly hasn't impeded her success, nor her passion for her current causes. And it sheds some interesting light on both her support of the recent "Toronto Declaration" (protesting TIFF's decision to do a Tel Aviv spotlight this year) and her subsequent partial recantation on her website - both of these now seem entirely in character with the woman who wrote this book: her determination to do the right thing ("make it better", as she says), but also her determination to be honest and face up to mistakes. Startlingly (but gratifyingly, in some ways), I got my first big surprise of the book not from her bleak childhood relations with her parents and surrogate parents, nor from the naughty sexual revelations of her marriage with Roger Vadim, but from her lingering fondness for "Barbarella" - I was fairly sure I would find a feminist denunciation of it instead. Makes my own lingering fondness for that camp masterpiece feel a little less guilty. Unable to quite come out and say it herself, perhaps, Fonda ruefully quotes her daughter characterizing her as a chameleon, mirroring whatever man was in her life at the time. While there are elements of truth in that (big surprise number 2, and not a particularly welcome one, is her conversion to Christianity, ca. Ted Turner and living in Atlanta, although thank goodness it doesn't pervade the pages of her book), yet Fonda also chronicles plenty of independent, self-determined action. While she may have spent a large part of her life not having a strong sense of self - poor ego boundaries=very good actress? my suggestion, not hers - she has obviously always had a strong sense of what she believes is right. May whatever God she believes in bless her for that.