Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeney’s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed News’ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on
The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of
Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and
Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award), and the author of a YA novel and picture book forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He uses
Twitter.
8 responses
I normally read books published by small/medium presses. Lately they seem to be putting out the most interesting work. But my mother told me I HAD to read The Book Thief. It’s not something I would have ever picked up myself, but she put it in my bag after feeding me, so I gave it a chance. It was totally wrong for me. She thought the language was beautiful. I was unimpressed. In fact, I kind of hated it. I put it down after about 30 pages. Happily, because she’s my mother, I was able to be honest and gave it back to her the next time she had me over for dinner.
Nuruddin Farah’s “Links.” Farah has a sterling reputation, and I’m sure he’s led an admirable life, but the purple prose was impossible to get through.
Eat Pray Love (because I like a lot of food writing) and A Love Story (because my husband had a tumor a few years ago). Barf. I am no longer friends with either recommender, either–these recs were clear signs the end was nigh.
12 years ago my mom broke into my dad’s email and discovered he was having an affair with a woman in Israel who claimed she was the reincarnation of Joan of Arc. My mom attacked my dad with a frying pan and, head bleeding, he escaped to catch a Greyhound Bus from their small Alberta town to Vancouver. My dad ended up homeless for about 3 months on the streets of Vancouver’s famously derelict Downtown East Side. I spoke to my father on the phone and found he was increasingly delusional, for example he insisted he was protected from the dangers of the street by angels who followed him around. My siblings and I sent my father money only to discover, instead of using the money for food and shelter, he sent the money to “Joan” in Israel in order to save up so she could move to Canada. During this time I became wired to heroin for the first time. I confided all of this to my friend Vanessa who gave me the book Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff. She said the book really helped her deal with her frustrations and I might find it useful for my stresses. I never read the book and later became a homeless junkie on the very same streets where my dad has his breakdown. “Joan” changed her name legally to Joan, moved to Canada and married my dad. They are now divorced but remain friends.
This is all true.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I’d never actually thrown a book in anger before that one.
I read Zadie Smith’s ON BEAUTY because I believed Frank Rich’s hard-sell in the NY Times Magazine and because I liked HOWARDS END which it was based on, which I count as 2 perhaps 3 mistakes I will never make again. That book just plain old badly written.
“Angle of Repose” by (?) I read through the entire book because it was highly recommended to me by a friend, and I thought I MUST be missing something. When I finished it I realized I would never get those hours of my life back, but at least I will never read anything by that author again. (I can’t even remember his name, but if I ever see it again, I will know better.)
I refer to “ON BEAUTY” as the “sexless sex book”, because the only people getting sex are the cheating men. The young adults don’t get any (except for one young man who has sex with one girl, apparently for the sole purpose of setting up a later scene with his cheating father), making me wonder if the author had teenage children she was vainly hoping would not have sex. At least that one was a gift.
Both of them went to the local library when I was done.
Wicked by Gregory Maguire -and- Glamorama by Brett Easton Ellis
Hated them both. I trudged all the way through Glamorama because I’d spent money on it after a friend was going on about how great Brett Easton Ellis was, and perhaps I just picked the wrong book. Hated enough to not pick up any others though.
Wicked, however, I never finished. I gave it until I was just past the first third, and then turned it in for store credit at the local bookstore around the same time I got rid of Glamorama.
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