Books NOT to discuss at Thanksgiving Dinner

This might be Gianna's family...or it might be from
Good Morning America's Awkward Thanksgiving Photos.

If you read one blog post today about how to survive your Thanksgiving gathering...it should
probably be one written by just about anyone else. Let's say that you are joining your bookish family for turkey and such, though, but need to stay clear of awkward themes. You're entering a minefield of cranky people pissed off that the gravy and turkey aren't ready to go to the table at the same time, and the prudish aunt who's offended by every topic of any interest and is not so silently judging your life choices, and the asshole uncle who's been watching cable news all year and has many, many racist sentiments to share, and your precocious cousin who's the queen of the duckface selfie and also tight with Jesus, and yet there you are, crusading book nerd, searching for anything, ANYTHING, to discuss that won't lead to tears, screaming, or your brother live-tweeting the whole ordeal with the hashtag #shitcrazyfam. Oh yeah, and there are about four family dogs present and all are having turkey-gasms while the bird is roasting. We want you to survive the day relatively unscathed. Why? We love our fans (and those who search online for "awkward lesbian conversation" or "The Sound of Music Liesl" and find this blog).

Here you go. DO NOT offer up these books/authors as topics of conversation if you want to keep the peace. (Alternately, if you love the holiday train wreck, by all means use this list as a game plan for your day. We won't judge you.)

No, you don't want to
discuss this book or
movie with your parents. 

1. Fifty Shades of Grey. Chances are that this is the one book that multiple people present at your dinner have read (or about which they have an opinion). Now that the movie trailer is playing online and in theaters, the Fifty Shades insanity is ramping up once again, but don't fall into this trap. First, do you really want to hear your mom talk about steamy sex books? And then there's the chance that your dad also read it "just to see what the fuss was about," and though he secretly loved it, again, it's a parent talking about sex at the Thanksgiving table. And then granny wants to know what they're talking about and precocious cousin invokes the name of Jesus to offer an opinion totally based on her extensive life experience of church youth group trips to Mexico. The aunt who may have conceived precocious cousin without ever actually having copulated with asshole uncle is judging you. Also consider that your mom might utter "Oh my," and invoke her Inner Goddess when the dogs begin humping each other. There's on way your brother won't post the whole scene on the internet. Best to avoid.

2. The Colony by John Tayman. This book is a history of the leper colony on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. Not only is it about leprosy and the glory of body parts sloughing off (who needs a nose?), but it's also the story of how a bunch of people only suspected of having leprosy were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to Molokai even when they didn't have the disease. Pass the lumpy mashed potatoes.

3. The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Maybe you should just avoid all books about infectious diseases. This one is topical in that it's about the history and threat of Ebola, but prudish aunt will not want to hear about hemorrhagic fevers while cooking that cranberry sauce. It's a really great, terrifying read, though, and I actually did read it over the course of a Christmas afternoon one year when I was a kid.

We love Ina, but she's not the one
cooking your dinner. Red flag. 

4. Anything by the Barefoot Contessa. Your food is not going to look like Ina Garten's. Your asshole uncle is not going to like that you're comparing his grocery store-bought pecan pie to the the picture of the pie in the cookbook your mom is showing your father, complete with judging and whispering. While I would love to attend an Ina-catered T-Day gathering, your relatives aren't professionals and you will struggle to swallow that dry turkey bite if you sink into a reverie for sumptuous feasts that might have been. (This advice extends to all cookbooks, except perhaps for that Guy Fieri person's because he doesn't seem particularly competent or sanitary. And now I'm checking to see if Guy Fieri is published by Penguin Random House....okay, good. He's not published by my company.)

5. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. There's a good chance that asshole uncle dislikes prudish aunt. There's a good chance that prudish aunt wants to destroy asshole uncle's life. These people didn't start as miserable jerks. There are years of hostilities simmering and you don't want to give either of them any ideas. And let's not even start with your parents' marriage.

6. The Dinner by Herman Koch. I love this book, but A) it's dark, B) it's unsettling, C) it's all about a horrible family meal and secrets, and D) don't give the relatives any ideas.

7. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Your cousin is already insufferable. Avoid books about which she's a crusader. Okay? Okay.

8. The Children Act by Ian McEwan. I love this novel and think it's a book that most people should read and discuss. It's a short, moral novel about a family court judge whose husband of 30 years has announced he wants an open marriage, and then the court case she must decide the next day. The case involves a hospital suing to administer a blood transfusion in order to save the life of a 17 year-old kid with leukemia. The kid is a Jehovah's Witness, though, and is religiously opposed and self-righteous in that way that teenagers are about their untried convictions. This is a great, great book for your reading group, but in the family Thanksgiving minefield, you're just asking for some teenage proselytizing or asshole uncle mansplaining.

9. The Song of Fire and Ice Series (Game of Thrones) by George R. R. Martin. Prudish aunt will not approve of the gore, or the sex, or the dragons, or the incest. Asshole uncle will not approve of you paying for HBO to watch the series.

Mmm...Scientology.

10. Going Clear by Lawrence Wright. Oh, dude, we love love love this book, and the word is that HBO is making a documentary based on the book (and hired 160 lawyers to vet everything). This is the history and expose of L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology. It's juicy stuff and full of details about Hollywood, religion, cult behavior, abuse of power, science fiction, aliens, and money. Why avoid it? A) There's a possibility of sliding down the slope of logic that suggests that if this religion is a corrupt scam, what about all of the other faiths out there? B) There's the chance that your relatives are prank people and will sign you up for the Scientologists' mailing list. Once you're on there, you can never escape. C) There's the possibility that precocious cousin converts right there at the table, or asshole uncle rails so vehemently about the sheeple and Hollywood elite liberals that he has a heart attack. You do not want to be the one asked to administer CPR to that asshole, and with all the excitement of a crisis, the dogs are probably humping again in this background. Steer clear.

Happy Thanksgiving. Good luck.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 8

Day 8: A Book That Scares You

Who needs a book to scare me?  The people who lounge out by the pool at my apartment complex scare me every day.  Between the woman with "Hottie" written in pink sequins across her posterior and Mr. Banana Hammock, it's a horror show of the first order.  Books, well, that's a bit tougher.

Gianna

This question is too vague. What immediately comes to mind is any celebrity book that includes poetry. It could be a biography with an example of what the actor jots down in the middle of the night when he can't sleep, or really just full on "poetry" (looking at you Rosie). I must include musicians on this list..Jewel, stop it. T-Boz (TLC for those of you not cool) absolutely not. Melissa Etheridge...honey just set that shit to music; do not try to pass it off as poetry.

Liz

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

Let's start with my dislike of monkeys and all primates.  Throw in the killer virus that wipes out up to 90% of the people who contract it and does things like making your eyes bleed and liquefying your internal organs.  Add that the killer monkey virus that can spread to humans came to the US and it could happen again.  Oh, and it's not fiction. The book freaks me out.

Birthday: Back to the Future, Books, and...a Basket of Beans.





Ernie Cline and his Delorean.

So my birthday passed a couple of weeks ago, and the party person I am...I celebrated by working.  I traveled to Austin to attend a bookseller luncheon with Ernest Cline, the author of the upcoming novel Ready Player One, a book that celebrates the joyfully geeky 80's culture.  How enthralled is the author with period pop culture?  He spent his book advance on a Delorean (the Back to the Future car) and then installed a flux capacitor.  I have no 80's music nostalgia at all, but I do love me a vintage video game, and on the drive home that afternoon I recalled that my first Nintendo was a joint birthday gift the summer that we turned 11 (the joy of the twin joint gift, joint birthday cake, joint birthday party), a gift we never expected because our parents disapproved of video games.  Coincidentally, our great grandmother died that day too, but the Nintendo seemed more significant. 

Most people won't give me books for special occasions because I already have so many.  Two notable exceptions growing up were a couple of Christmases for which I received the Anne of Green Gables box set and a copy of The Hot Zone.  Both impacted me--Anne gave me a smart, outspoken "kindred spirit" to follow on adventures, and The Hot Zone...reinforced my monkey horror.  It's still the scariest book I've ever read.  Nothing says "Merry Christmas Lizzie!" like monkeys carrying Ebola into the US; I dreamed about bleeding from my eyeballs for months after reading it.

Gianna and her friends occasionally will have book exchange parties, an awesome idea.  Each person brings a copy of a book that possesses special meaning for him/her, and then the participants talk about the books, why they're special, and then exchange.  I think Gianna brought Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss.  (She might not have, but Gianna loves this book.  Nothing says "Party at Gianna's House!" like a literary memoir about an incestuous relationship.)  One of the best parts of my job involves finding readers for the advance reading copies of forthcoming novels, and occasionally I will love a book that I'm also selling so much that it feels like I'm sharing a personal treasure with a fellow book lover.  There's a little novel just published called The Upright Piano Player, a quiet, contemplative book in a perfect package that redefines the idea of summer reading.  One of my colleagues called me to ask if I'd read it back before our sales conference months ago, and through his enthusiasm it became an overall rep favorite.  It deserves a wide readership.  Check it out.

My sister and I don't exchange birthday gifts most of the time.  It just seems strange.  We do typically get together around the time of our birthday, usually for an Astros game (though I'm a book nerd and she's an aerospace engineer, we both love baseball).  We going to see the Astros lose to the Red Sox in a few days. 



And the Astros games bring me around to what Gianna gave me for my birthday.  Between innings, Goya, the Mexican food company, sponsors a shell game contest on the jumbotron involving a baseball hidden inside a can of beans and shuffled around.  It's hilarious.  Even better, though, is the prize for the lucky fan who gets to play: a gift basket of Goya products.  I think it's awesome--go to the game, win beans!  I have wanted to be the lucky contestant for years.  My pal Gianna has attended enough Astros games with me over the last few years that she knows of my gassy obsession.  And then she surprised me. 



That's every Goya product Gianna could find.
It weighs about 30 lbs.



Never mind that I don't cook; I'm going to display this prize on my dining room table for years.  The Antiques Roadshow will visit my area in 2041 and I'll haul in my gift basket and have it appraised, and they will marvel at it.  I will bequeath my Goya gift basket to a literacy foundation and they will take my vintage beans and sell them for books and create the Liz Sullivan literacy center and in the lobby will be a mural of fart-inducing products, books, and Gianna and it will be magical.  Like the musical fruit.



Give books for birthdays.  Save the ozone layer from noxious gasses and other beany perils.