Just Don't Burn My Books

A girl once told me autumn was the most violent season. I’m starting to agree. It’s been a time of financial ruin, ecological destruction and casual remarks about a second Holocaust (if Ahmadinejad doesn’t believe the first one happened, how can there be a second?). Halloween is coming up, promising sadistic pranks and of course, lots of people dressed up like schlockey mom Sarah Palin, but slutty.

Recession, hurricanes, Holocaust, Hoes—bring it on! As Yosemite Sam, that paragon of wisdom advised me when I was five: “If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em.” This autumn I’m going to ride high the wave of carnage, at least until I can drug ‘em and drown ‘em.




Last Wednesday I got to see Jonathan Fast read from his chilling new tome Ceremonial Violence ($25.95, Overlook Hardcover, 336 p.). This exploration of the hows and whys of school shootings is as insightful as it is intense. Often my morbid sense of humor got the best of me and I chuckled in horror at Brenda Spencer, 16, who after shooting elementary school children explained "I hate Mondays."




Fast describes school shootings as “grotesque going away parties.” Luckily I had only RSVP’d for the book party graciously feted by epic writer Susan Shapiro. I ran my red wine stained mouth to a pleasant man writing a book about Chinese spy Chi Mak “the perfect sleeper agent.” The Bordeaux went well with the talk of bullets and how in New York “when things like this happen, they happen on the streets.”

More on China, and how everyone keeps telling me they’re bigger, stronger, smarter, richer and own 1/3rd of America. Joe McGinniss’s Never Enough ($7.99, Pocket Star, 384 p.) is a fascinating true account of million$, milkshakes and murder in Hong Kong. There’s sex, drugs and expatriate investment bankers google searching Taiwanese gay boys. Besides the lurid details McGinniss serves up a rich psychological portrait of greed, love and loss.



The leaves are turning fiery red and falling faster than I can crunch them. At least I’m not killing 7 lbs. cats, or growing a mustache and chasing after Bugs Bunny with a shotgun...yet.

-Royal Young