Andy on Andy

Chairs. Neat people. Ugliness. War. Over six decades of intrepid reporting and elegant essays, Andy Rooney has proven a shrewd cultural analyst - unafraid to question the sometimes ridiculous, often surprising facts of our lives.

Rooney's great gift is telling it straight, without a hint of sugar coating, but with more than a grain of truth and humor. His take on America? It's just amazing how long this country has been going to hell without ever having got there. On food? There's more dependable mediocrity than there used to be.

Today you can purchase Andy Rooney for only $4.35.

Click here to purchase Andy Rooney

The essentials to be a redneck

Repost of earlier post as book is now supercheap!

Even if you won't admit it, someone in your family - near or far-flung - probably meets the qualifications to be a bona fide redneck.

This book is a close-up look at the qualities that make the redneck male special. The book covers all the essentials, including his fashion sense, personal hygiene, choice of automobiles, mating rituals, prowess at entertaining, conversation skills, preferred leisure time activities, eating and drinking habits, and child-rearing expertise.

Any resemblance to any person, living or dead or related, is entirely coincidental.

How Many Women Does It Take to Change a Redneck?, written by David Boyd, is available today for only $1.29.

Click here to purchase How Many Women Does It Take to Change a Redneck?

Knit one, purl two, laugh, repeat

By no means a proficient knitter, I still love to pull out the needles and knit and purl the stitches to create a scarf, sweater, slippers, or afghan. There's only one thing better than knitting - knitters. Creative, friendly and candid, I love spending time with knitters, clicking the needles and discussing life.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's Free-Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Writes Again reminds us of the joy we felt upon first encountering her hilarious and poignant collection of essays surrounding her favorite topics: knitting, knitters, and what happens when you get those two things anywhere near ordinary people.

For the 60 million knitters in America, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (a.k.a. the Yarn Harlot) shares stories of knitting horrors and triumphs, knitting successes and defeats, but, mostly, stories about the human condition that ring true for everyone--especially if you happen to have a rather large amount of yarn in your house.

Funny, unique, and gleeful in her obsession, Pearl-McPhee speaks to knitters of all skill levels in this delightful celebration of craft and creativity. Today you can purchase Free-Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Writes Again for only $4.26.

Click here to purchase Free-Range Knitter: The Yarn Harlot Writes Again

Don't put that in your mouth!

I grew up in rural America - open spaces, fresh air, hard work on the farm. As toddlers, we were pretty much like other kids, except we often found interesting objects to try to eat. If my mother said it once, she said it ten thousand times, "Don't put that in your mouth!" Apparently Anthony Bourdain's mother never uttered any such words.

Bestselling chef and No Reservations host Anthony Bourdain serves up a well-seasoned hellbroth of candid, often outrageous stories from his worldwide misadventures. Whether surviving a lethal hot pot in Chengdu, splurging on New York's priciest sushi, or singing the praises of Ecuadorian line cooks and Hell's Kitchen dives, Bourdain is as provocative, engaging, and opinionated as ever.

The Nasty Bits is an irresistible tasting menu of food writing at its outrageous best-served up Bourdain style. A thirty-year veteran of professional kitchens, he is the host of the television series No Reservations and the executive chef at Les Halles in Manhattan.

Today you can buy The Nasty Bits for the Kindle for only $3.08.

Click here to purchase The Nasty Bits

SuperCheap! The biggest rockstar not in the USA

Every one of us can name at least five rockstars we idolized during our teen years. Would you name Dean Reed? He was one of the biggest rockstars on earth - just not in America.

Dean Reed had one of the strangest careers in the history of popular culture. Failing to gain recognition for his music in his native United States, he achieved celebrity in South America in the early 1960s and then, unbelievably, became the biggest rock star in the Soviet Union.

His albums went gold from Bulgaria to Berlin. He made highly successful movies and, naively earnest, was an unwitting acolyte for socialism. Everywhere he went, he was mobbed by his fans. And then, in 1986, at the height of his fame, he drowned in mysterious circumstances in East Berlin.

Drawn magnetically to his story, Reggie Nadelson pursued the mystery of Dean Reed's life and death across America and Eastern rope. As she traveled, the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union crumbled, and Reed became an increasingly alluring figure, his life an unrepeatable tale of the Cold War world.

Part biography, part memoir and personal journey, Comrade Rockstar is an unforgettable chronicle of an utterly improbable life

Today you can buy Comrade Rockstar for only $1.82.

Click here to purchase Comrade Rockstar

How does a country shape its literature?

Remember Brit Lit (or British Literature for the purist)? I took the class during my senior year in high school and only remember reading Shakespeare.

Nation and Novel traces English prose fiction from its late medieval origins through its stories of rogues and criminals, family rebellions and suffering heroines, to the present-day novels of immigration.

Major novelists from Daniel Defoe to the late twentieth century have drawn on national history and mythology in novels which have pitted Cavalier against Puritan, Tory against Whig, region against nation, and domesticity against empire.

The English novel is deeply concerned with the fate of the nation, but almost always at variance with official and ruling-class perspectives on English society.

Nation and Novel is available today for $3.65.

Click here to purchase Nation and Novel

Are we BFF?

BFF. Whether it means Best Friends Forever or Best Female Friend, it's about friends.

Not all of us are famous or have famous friends. Melissa Hellstern lives and writes in Los Angeles. Her book tells the story of friendship between some of Hollywood's well-known women:
Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren
Coco Chanel and Madame Misia Sert
Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett

If we are truly fortunate, we each have one special friend in our lives-the one who cheers every accomplishment no matter how small, who lifts spirits in even the darkest hour, and who knows our deepest secrets and will never tell.

Getting Along Famously brings these famous friendships down to earth and explores the precious the art of friendship and the many forms it takes. Today you can purchase the book for Kindle for only $3.70.

Click here to purchase Getting Along Famously

Hemlines and the economy?

Titles will sometimes pull you right in and you don't even know what hit you. My question is: Who was the guy (and you know it was a guy!) who first made the connection between hemlines and the economy? Not your stereotypical economist or actuary, I'm thinking.

Peter Fitzsimons has written a book that reviews some of life's "theories, conundrums, observations, quotations, and whatnots," including the one about hemlines.

Humorously written, you will learn the history behind some commonly held truths. Such as: every taxi driver knows that a driver wearing a hat will drive 20 miles per hour slower than those without hats.

This book will entertain you and give you enough information to be competitive in a trivia contest. You can buy How Hemlines Predict the Economy: Explanations, Rationalizations, and Theories on Everything today for only $3.66.

Click here to purchase How Hemlines Predict the Economy

Real men. . . or the product of a well-known comedian?

Even if you won't admit it, someone in your family - near or far-flung - probably meets the qualifications to be a bona fide redneck.

This book is a close-up look at the qualities that make the redneck male special. The book covers all the essentials, including his fashion sense, personal hygiene, choice of automobiles, mating rituals, prowess at entertaining, conversation skills, preferred leisure time activities, eating and drinking habits, and child-rearing expertise.

Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

How Many Women Does It Take to Change a Redneck?, written by David Boyd, is available today for only $2.53.

Click here to purchase How Many Women Does It Take to Change a Redneck?

Long before CDs, mp3s, and even 8-track tapes

If you are familiar with turntables, needles, 78s and 33s, and the Victrola, then you may identify with William Howland Kenney's book as he writes of the relationship between recorded music and the social, political, and economic forces in America during the rise and fall of the phonograph. The book also has the biographies of famous recording artists and is a well-researched history of the industry.

Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945 is available today for the Kindle for only $3.17.

Click here to purchase Recorded Music in American Life

It IS a wonderful life!

"Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan!"

Every time I watch this movie, I tear up when George Bailey yells this out. If you are a fan of this movie, you must get this book. Featuring dozens of interviews, the book highlights behind the scenes happenings and how generations of Americans have fallen in love with Jimmy Stewart and the lovable Christmas movie. Today you can buy It's a Wonderful Life: A Memory Book for only $4.09.

Click here to purchase It's A Wonderful Life: A Memory Book

Bill and Hillary - good for a laugh

You just can't make this kind of stuff up! Julia Goran has compiled some of the best quotes by Bill and Hillary Clinton. You will either be scratching your head thinking, "This guy was a Rhodes scholar?" or you will be shaking your head thinking, "Huh?"

But whatever you think, the book, Clintonisms: The Amusing, Confusing, and Even Suspect Musing, of Billary, is cheap today for only $3.76.

Notice, the book graphic is on the left side of the blog entry. You might even say it is left leaning.

Click here to purchase Clintonisms: The Amusing, Confusing, and Even Suspect Musing, of Billary

Cheaper than a Jefferson - Unusual first person narrative

This is the story of two men with diminished mental capacity - one through a head injury and another because of early Alzheimer's. The two travel with a very valuable baseball card, heading to Chicago to find someone to buy the card and allow one to remain independent for a while longer. Believe it or not, this novel is intended to be funny and, according to the reviews, has some very light-hearted moments.

Sherwood Kiraly's novel, Diminished Capacity, is selling for cheaper than a Jefferson for only $1.79 today.

Click here to purchase Diminished Capacity

Where all the women are strong, all the men are handsome and all the children are above average

Fourth of July is nearing and the citizens of Lake Wobegon are planning the celebration. Garrison Keiller, star of The Prairie Home Companion, has written a novel about Clint Bunsen, a man who has just turned 60 and is contemplating where he has been and where he wants to go. All is told with Keiller's trademark humor and loaded with Minnesota folksiness.

Buy Liberty today for only $4.86. Enjoy all the fun of Lake Wobegon with none of the appeals heard during pledge week on public radio.

Click here to purchase Liberty

I love you, man - and it isn't a romance novel

Let's be honest. Guys friendships and relationships are different from women's friendships and relationships. Guys go to lunch; women do lunch. Guys talk sports; women talk fashion. That's just the way God made us.

D.M. Chapman and Greg Suess have written a book that provides humorous insight to how men share their feelings without giving away their feelings. Ms. Chapman (yes, she's a woman) writes stand-up comedy so the book is bound to be funny.

I Love You, Man. . . .but Not Like That is available today for $2.81. We do not guarantee that you will understand guys any better after reading this book.

Click here to purchase I Love You, Man

If you love TVLand, you will love this cheap book

If you remember watching Ed McMahon in real time, you will love the oral history of the early years of television that Ed has compiled from the people who were there. He interviewed Andy Griffith and Ron Howard (I love The Andy Griffith Show!), Dick Clark, Soupy Sales, and others from way back when.

His book, When Television Was Young , is going for only $4.58 today. Buy it and relive the days of your youth.

Click here to purchase When Television Was Young

Not exactly the da Vinci Code, but cheaper than a Washington ($1 bill)

Rick and Bubba, pop culture radio hosts of the South, are writing again with their latest humorous book The Rick & Bubba Code: The Two Sexiest Fat Men Alive Unlock the Mysteries of the Universe. I won't comment whether Rick and Bubba (Rick Burgess and Bill Bussey) are really the two sexiest fat men alive, but let's just say that their looks are perfect for radio.

You can learn all the mysteries of the universe for the cheap price of $0.94. At a price of less than $1, do you even care if they are sexy or not?

NOTE: The description on Amazon says there is a CD in the back of the book. Don't know how they accomplish that on the Kindle, but let me know if you get a CD.

Click here to purchase The Rick & Bubba Code