FIERCE ANTICIPATION: June 4-6

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a blogumn by Ryan Dixon

A very busy week with lots of overdue projects equals an abbreviated Fierce Anticipation. Instead of providing you with an 2,000 word exegesis on the glories of Honey Baked Ham or a dissertation exploring the semiotics of The Real Housewives of New York, I’ve compiled a special treat, just in time for summer. So, without further adieu…

Fierce and Nerdy Proudly Presents…

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Fierce Anticipation’s 16th Annual Unconventional, Inappropriate and All-together Arousing Summer Reading List of 50 Books Selected at Random by Me, Ryan Dixon

Previews and Reviews for each of the books can be found after the jump!

One sentence previews and reviews after the jump!

For those wanting to be a serial killer: Final Truth : The Autobiography of a Serial Killer by Donald H. Gaskins and Wilton Earle

For those wanting to catch a serial killer: Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

For those wanting to forget the Ben Roethlisberger affair and be reminded why the Pittsburgh Steelers are the single greatest organization in the history of sports: Rooney: A Sporting Life by Robert L. Ruck, Maggie Jones Patterson, and Michael P. Weber

For those wanting to read a great new thriller written by my 91-year-old grandfather, a published author at last: A Watch in the Night by James R. Libbey

For those who feel guilty about being too happy in their lives and want to buy a $160 book with intensely disturbing photographs of genocides from around the world: Inferno by James Nachtwey.

For those who just finished reading Inferno and still don’t feel depressed enough:  The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

For those looking for something to talk about with the Asian masseuse giving you a happy ending massage: The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters by Richard Bernstein

For those who lost their copy of Geraldo Rivera’s autobiography Exposing Myself and are now willing to pay $561.44 for a new copy: Exposing Myself by Geraldo Rivera

For those who love this blogumn and want to see me get so many readers that I actually begin to get paid for writing it:  And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture by Bill Wasik

For those wanting to know which 50 architects they should know: 50 Architects You Should Know by Isabel Khul

For those wanting to forget about Obama’s mistakes and go back to Bush bashing:  Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America by Russ Baker

For those curious about Richard Nixon’s moviegoing habits: Nixon at the Movies: A Book about Belief by Mark Feeney

For those in the mood to read a 3,000 page book on the history of violence: Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means by William T. Vollmann

For those needing to take a break from reading a 3,000 page book on the history of violence and relax with a 1,300 page book on the history of Imperial County, CA by the same author: Imperial by William T. Vollmann

For those interested in learning how Adam West (TV’s “Batman”) tried to join Burt Ward (“Robin”) in a threesome, got rejected and was forced to sit in a nearby chair where he could only watch and masturbate, finishing up with, to quote the book, a “handful of frustration”: Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights by Burt Ward

For those wanting to know why their town has such a stupid name:  Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States by George R. Stewart

For those reading this site who have somehow not yet heard about Ernessa T. Carter’s soon-to-be-released novel 32 Candles: 32 Candles: A Novel by Ernessa T. Carter

For those wanting to know the best way to make someone a cuckold: The Country Wife by William Wycherley

For those straights who want to turn gay: Under the Rainbow: The Real Liza Minnelli by George Mair

For those gays who want to turn straight: The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume 1: The Frontier Stories by Louis L’Amour

For those wanting to know why it’s called a sandwich: Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words by John Marciano

For those who love violent car wrecks: Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum

For those who can’t help, but hum “Sweet Caroline” at least once a day: He Is . . . I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond by David Wild

For those NYC dwellers wanting to know why they’re stuck in traffic on the Triborough Bridge every day : The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro

For those wondering if their grandparents were anally probed too: The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Antiquity to 1915: A Source Book by Michael J. Crowe

For those looking for an easy way to get away with murder: The Savage Garden: Cultivating Carnivorous Plants by Peter D’Amato

For those who want to know why Bertrand Russell is not a Christian: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russell

For those wanting to spy on their friends, office mates and that really hot next-door neighbor: The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace

For those who want to know who was the NFL’s leading rusher in 1967: NFL Record & Fact Book 2010 by the Editors at the NFL

For those who drink too much: Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reed by Robert Sellers

For those who need to drink more: Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis by Kingsley Amis

For those who want to read a “non-fiction” book that will change the world and also involve the Lizard People: The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World by David Icke

For those who want their life changed for the better: Hell House by Chad Feehan and Ryan Dixon (How will it change your life? Buy it when it goes on sale and find out!)

For those curious as to whether Hitler really had only one ball: Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil by Ron Rosenbaum

For those wanting to live in the world’s most livable city:  The Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh in the Twenty-first Century by Brian O’Neill

For those who have always wanted to read an essay in seven parts: The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts by Milan Kundera

For those who think their neighbors are Satanists: Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History by David Frankfurter

For those who want to know why Disneyworld is our version of the Vatican: Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando by Richard E. Foglesong

For those who are having trouble sleeping: The Essential Chomsky by Noam Chomsky

For those who still believe the one about the babysitter…: The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings by Jan Harold Brunvand

For those in the mood for patricide, matricide, fratricide,  infanticide, filicide, regicide, genocide and just plain homicide (not to mention decapitation, rape, incest, cannibalism, and genital mutilation): The Hebrew Bible (as told to several writers) by God. Often imitated. Never Duplicated. Since 586 BCE.