Hoyt’s Top 5 Reads of 2011

Christopher J. Hoyt is the Assistant Inventory Operations Manager at BookPeople. He spends his time doing everything better than Allan.

#5: Habibi by Craig Thompson

If you’re going to take 9 years to complete your follow up, you better have something to show for it.
Anticipation can lead to a frenzy of harsh criticism if you keep taunting the tiger with meat.  You can lose an arm, or a leg, or your street cred in Vegas.  Does that make sense?  No?  Ok.  Lets say I ordered a pizza and it took 9 years from oven to table.  That pizza better grant 3 wishes and one of those wishes I can use for more wishes.  But that’s pizza and pizza is different from books (Book It Program being the exception).  So here’s Craig Thompson and a book just shy of a decade in the making.  I bet he walks with a swagger.  Believe the hype.  It really is that good.  It really looks that good on your bookshelf.  Remember when you were without Habibi on your bookshelf and how everyone took you for a fool?  We know better now.  Thanks Habibi.

#4: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Yes.  There have been a Million x Infinity things written about this book, but none of them by me. And you know you can trust me.  I’m common as folk.   New York Times Book Review, on the other hand, runs its mouth trying to tell me Her Fearful Symmetry was worth reading.  LIES New York Times Book Review.  You can’t be trusted.  We are finished and I want my grandmother’s jewelry  back.  Granted, New York Times Book Review really liked Ready Player One.  However, I liked it more.  What’s it about, you ask?  Well let me tell you a story.  I was sitting with Ernie in his Delorean and I says to Ernie, “Ernie, how does it feel to have written a book that is the exact opposite of everything that nobody wants to read about?  Bringing light into a world of darkness, and by darkness I mean boring and by light I mean awesome.”  He looks at me and he says “Man, I don’t know.  But isn’t Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers the jam?”  Yes Ernie, they are.

#3:  Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan

Kester Smith made me read Pulphead.  It’s not that I didn’t want to.  On the contrary, I had never heard of said book until Kester Smith started using his cheerful brand of peer pressure and that  “Gee golly frick, This Is Amazing Read This Now” thing that he does when he gets all lap dog excited.  He’s like a dope peddler gang lord in that way.  Only he’s trying to get you to read the best collection of journalistic essays ever and not, you know, ride the dragon.  Now that I think about it, that would be a gang worth joining.  We could stand on street corners in tough guy jackets and say things like “Hey kid, wassa matah wit you.  You don’t like the best collection of journalistic essays ever or something?  Take a book or take a hike.  Sheesh.”  Then we comb our hair with switchblade combs because we are the coolest.

#2  The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt

Dear Charles Portis,

What is it that you have been up to?  I just checked your Wikipedia page and as far as they know, You ain’t dead yet. Working on something new?  Trying to go the Craig Thompson route?  I’m twiddling thumbs here Chuck.  I’m getting ornery.  I guess I’m just going to have to rely on this Dewitt fella to entertain me with a classic western tale chock-a-block full of dry humor and kerosene slick wit.  He makes me laugh, Chuck.  He makes me want whiskey and get all shoot’em up pow pow in my head.  He reminds me of you in that way.  Write soon.

Love,

Christopher

#1  The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollack

“Devil All the Time, you say? Better keep an extra pair of britches handy for to mess yerself ,” my feeble grandmother would say while canning (Ball Jarring) pear preserves.  She’s a crass old bag but she has a point.  I picked up The Devil all the Time and then I put it down again, because I finished it that fast.  Then I sat on the porch for a good spell.  Cleaned my gun.  Asked God how a book could be as good as a pole cat smells bad.  No answer.  Now there’s water getting in my scotch bottle because I’m in the shower.  It’s not that I feel dirty, I just don’t want my girlfriend to see me crying.  It’s a nifty trick I picked up during the drought.  Borrow it if you like.  Just be careful around Devil all the Time.