So anyway, the other day I was in my local HEB super center [1](that’s a grocery store for folks reading this who live outside of Texas and Mexico) and I decided to have a look at the books since I’m always interested to see the kind of books you can buy in a mega grocery store. Since they offer nothing but the best selling titles, it’s like a direct line to the popular reading taste.
There wasn’t too much Alejandro Jodorowsky [2]or Daniil Kharms [3]but there was a lot of James Patterson, Twilight, Sarah Palin and a goodly stack of George Bush’s Decision Points. What would it be like, I wondered, to spend a year only reading books purchased from HEB or Wal-Mart? I could call it The Year of Reading Dangerously, write a blog and then get a book out of it. Maybe even a film deal, like that Meryl Streep Julia Child crock of shit. [4]
Anyway, there weren’t too many surprises, so I decided to head over to the ‘Children’ section, to see what the kids are into. Evidently not the classics: I couldn’t spot any Cat in the Hat, or — important for a European sort like me- Asterix [5]or Tintin. [6]Depressing. Instead there was some book about a monster that learned to read or some such PBS- esque worthy crap.
But then, stacked behind the monster that learned to read I saw a row of copies of Of Thee I Sing [7]by a certain Barack Obama. Oh that’s right, I thought. The president knocked out a kid’s book recently. Apparently it’s another one of his “letters to his daughters” that he feels compelled to share with the rest of us, all the things he wants them to know about America or something. By extension, we may assume these are the things he wants everybody’s daughters (and presumably sons) to know about America.
The first thing I noticed was that none of the copies were placed facing out but rather were all stuck behind other kid’s books. Then I noticed there were a lot more copies of Sarah Palin’s latest opus in the store, not to mention Bush’s memoir. But then again, we are talking Williamson County, [8]Texas here.
Anyway, I took a copy off the shelf and had a quick flick. After reading about eight words I realized it was about as pompous and boring as you’d expect. Each page, or at least the pages I looked at contained a rhetorical question beginning: Do you know that… and was immediately followed by some piety that everybody knows. Naturally I’ve already forgotten most of it, but the page I do remember said something like:
Do you know that America contains lots of people of all different backgrounds working together?
I paraphrase of course, but that was more or less it. And that was more or less it for the rest of the book — a really exceptionally lazy and complacent piece of work that obviously relied entirely on the author’s celebrity status to get into print, much like a Nicole Richie novel. [9]Fuck me, but the thing doesn’t even rhyme. The artist, at least, had spent some time over her paintings, cheerful enough but somehow reminiscent of the kind of things you might see daubed on the walls of a children’s Leukemia ward.
In short, if you’re thinking about buying it as somebody’s Christmas gift, I wouldn’t bother. Buy the kid some knives or ammo instead. The good news is — at least we know writing the thing didn’t distract the president from the important business of running the country for very long. Ten minutes maybe. Possibly fifteen. But that’s about it.
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Daniel Kalder [12]
Latest posts by Daniel Kalder (Posts [13])
- Book Review: Retroworld (plus, why I hate Star Trek) [14] - April 3, 2014
- A very expensive fungus [15] - October 16, 2013
- The secret rituals of history’s most creative minds [16] - October 9, 2013
- Apparently we are all getting very old [17] - October 3, 2013
- Vasily Grossman: from Stalingrad to toilet trouble [18] - August 28, 2013