33 1/3 Greatest Hits, Volume 1
Edited by David Barker
Continuum
Street: 10.30
As the disclaimer at the beginning of this book advises, the 33 1/3 series is not for everyone. People who canonize their favorite albums, feeling that their commitment to and investigation of said discs (i.e. the search for the actual recording speed of The Cure's The Top and the reason that Robert Smith didn't catch this before mastering) gives them some sort of ownership, eat these books for three squares and a snack. Others will find the dedication of an entire tome to one record a tad heavy-handed, pedantic and verbose. With that in mind, this collection includes a chapter from each of the first twenty volumes of 33 1/3, just enough to get you started. The editor's genius behind such a gesture is two-fold. He knows that those who aren't already addicted and own each book will shortly do so after reading a few slices; you might only own those covering Meat is Murder and Unknown Pleasures, but the geek in you will even care about Abba Gold and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn before you're through. Second, those with even a modicum of interest in the music-making process (those who only glance at magazines for their source of music info) will be able to sustain their interest with these Reader's Digest portions. At the very least, the hot pink cover—and the featured cartoonish hot chick—will provide a nice contrast to your theory library and impress the girl you manage to bring back to your lair. – Dave Madden

The Salt Palace
Darren DeFrain
New Issue Press
Street: 10.2005
This book was written by some smarty-pants who was obviously raised in Utah. It is a story about a Jack Mormon who goes on a road trip. I honestly didn't like the story very much at all. It had more holes in it than Tupac's corpse, but I won't trash it that bad because it's clear that the author is a Jazz fan. The book is weird because it is heavily footnoted with the Jazz's 96 playoff run and interesting tid bits of local Mormon trivia. The author explains just what the fuck those weird sculptures behind the Chuckorama on fourth south are and who built them. The footnotes almost work as an alternate story, one that I liked better than the story the author wrote. There are just all these variables in the fictional story that don't seem to add up in my opinion. May be I don't get it because I grew up in East Salt Lake with Mormonism crammed down my throat. There's a part at the end of the book where the Mormon dude's dad and him share a beer. Trust me, that kind of father-son bonding doesn't really happen in modern day Mormonism. If my dad offered me a beer one of these days I'd probably shit myself laughing while saying, "Good one dad! Now where's the cameras!" But creating this scenario is a nice attempt at appealing to non-Mormons as to the feeling the author was trying to capture at the time in the story. My favorite thing about the book was how it ended without mentioning that the Jazz ultimately lost game seven of the western conference finals to the Seattle Supersonics because we don't need to relive that sort of thing again anyway. Good call, Darren Defrain. –Mike Brown