Multiple Quick Ones + FREE
Stealing the Mystic Lamb by Noah Charney
Fantastically readable book about the most stolen piece of art in history—the altarpiece at Ghent. I don't know how much art knowledge or appreciation one needs to fully dig this book—I'm pretty fond of art, but not necessarily of this particular piece of art.
Still, you're missing something critical if Charney's stories don't suck you fully into this piece of art and the stories that surround it. Here's one: the painting features more than a dozen separate panels, and right this moment no one is 100% certain if one of the panels is "fake" or "real" or not (it's an incredibly cool story; you're better off buying the book and discovering the details instead of hearing it from me). Here's another: Hitler had an underground mine in which he stashed looted art, and that mine was hours from being detonated during WWII.
Charney's great book should, far as I can tell, offer something for any reader—fascinating background on art and art history, stories of duplicity and theft, religious details, etc. Get cracking.
If you know the name Kevin Mitnick (or read the journal 2600 [I'm looking at you, PW]), you should probably automatically just read this book (or, also, holy shit, if you know Kevin Poulsen's name and/or have read the book about his hacking exploits—I just now put it together that this is him). If you've ever purchased or seen tags-still-on-it stuff on ebay, you should read this book. If you're curious about what exactly theft looks like when it transpires online, you've got to read this book. The book's subtitle, How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground, does a weird sort of justice to the actual story presented in the book. Yes: Max Vision took over the cybercrime underground, but there are plenty of other details that make this book and story eminently readable and worth the time.
Moonwalking with Einstein
by Joshua Foer
This thing's been written up already at plenty of other places, so I don't want to waste anyone's time, but I will just say it's a damn, damn, damn good book, and fun to read, and will leave the reader asking real serious, fundamental questions regarding memory and identity, to say nothing of leaving everyone, all of us, wondering how much we're capable of remembering. No comment on the fact that the Foer brothers are taking over publishing and precociousness, whether they're competing for coverage or most books at a certain age, whatever.
My Korean Deli
by Ben Ryder Howe
This book's a hell of a lot of fun to get into, even if Howe—a former editor at the Paris Review (Plimpton dies late in this book—that's not to sound crass or cruel, but just to put things into context)—sometimes lets the book suffer a bit much from being so him. I don't know how to nicely articulate this complaint—it's the same (minor) beef I had with Sean Manning's The Things That Need Doing: it's a frustration with memoirs which are totally, impossibly dependent not just on the author's voice, but on the maneuvers of the author's voice. In other words, the thought/voice and how it doubles-back and wonders about itself actually functionally structures how things transpire on the page of the book. Which, of course, is how every book, memoir or not, works, to some degree, bt Howe seems a bit extra keenly aware of his own thoughts.
Which, actually, is a mostly minor thing, overall: it's, again, a hell of a lot of fun to get into. I got tired of the voice, but my distaste is as personal as the voice Howe uses. Read it; decide for yourself.
Separate Beds
by Elizabeth Buchan
I'll have a review shortly of Carold Edgarian's unstoppably gorgeous Three Stages of Amazement soon (have you read it? Hot damn hot damn), but I want to mention that other book because it, with Separate Beds, is part of of a 1-2 combo of books which I began thinking well, whatever, I'll read a few pages. Why? Because both books are about middle-aged couples, and are told from the female protagonist's pov. Do I only read stuff written for/about me? Course not, but, come on, middle-aged stuff?
Here's the dirty secret truth: hell yes, middle-aged stuff. I was 50 pages in before I'd even blinked. Is it shattering, life-changing fiction? No. But it's a story that satisfyingly passes the time. Also: I've got a copy of this to give away–send an email (wlcutter[at]hotmail) and it's yours.
