Book List 2006

Since 2002, I have written a letter once a year to the Attorney General, giving a comprehensive list of every book I have read in the last twelve months. This ritual was undertaken in response to provisions of the Patriot Act that allow the government to collect data on books anyone has purchased in bookstores and/or borrowed from libraries. Although, given the current USAG's increased interest in porn, the focus seems to be less on reading habits and more on viewing. In any event, I am keeping a promise to myself to continue this endeavor until section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act is either repealed or allowed to expire (a long wait indeed as it was revived for a ten-year period in 2005).

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2006.08.08
Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Gonzalez,

I suspect that you receive a lot of mail -- whether or not it has actually been addressed to you -- and likely do not remember the subject matter of my previous correspondence sent in July of 2005. To refresh your recollection, I am a mid-thirties attorney living in Boston who has written in the past to both you and your predecessor, John Ashcroft, regarding the same issues addressed in this letter. To date, neither of you have responded to my missives. Undeterred, however, by your lack of response, I write now to continue our dialogue (your part of which, I suspect is aimed directly toward an NSA file with my name at the top, instead of my home address, conveniently found in the header of this letter).

As part of my ongoing effort to save the precious government resources that would otherwise be expended in retrieving this data, I include below my reading list beginning with the first book read since my last letter extending to the present.

Here are the books I have read in the last twelve months (Note: I left off a few comic books and several books on lawyering that I read as part of continuing legal education as I am sure that they're all in your collection too).

1. Two Trains Running by Andrew Vachss
2. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
3. Demo (Collected Editon) by Brian Wood & Becky Cloonan
4. Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
5. Moon Handbooks: Brazil by Christopher Van Buren (see footnote 1 at no. 9. below)
6. Rape: A Love Story and Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates
7. The Onion Girl (reread) and Someplace to be Flying by Charles DeLint
8. Shake Hands With the Devil: the Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Roméo Dallaire and Samantha Power
9. Guns, Germs & Steel: the Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond¹
10. The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout
11. Cell by Stephen King
12. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
13. Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser
14. Flying in Place by Susan Palwick
15. The Train to Lo Wu: Stories by Jess Row²
16. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
17. The Question Concerning Technology by Martin Heidegger
18. Eats, Shoots and Leaves: the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss (see footnote 2)
19. Monster Island: A Zombie Novel by David Wellington
20. The Complete Joy of Homebrewing (3rd Edition) by Charles Papazian (currently reading)*

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¹ I read this on the plane to and from Salvador, Brazil, early this year. Thank you for letting me back into the country, by the way.

² Since a friend gave me this book as a gift, I suppose it will show up on his record search results and not mine.

* Just FYI, I started reading City Dharma: Keeping your Cool in the Chaos by Arthur Jeon, but the book was such a poorly written piece of self-important dogshit that I threw it in a box in the basement before finishing.

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Sorry about the fiction-heavy list, Mr. Attorney General. I find that in election off-years there are fewer books about politics that I care to invest in. I've also been a little worn down by the constant state of bad news coming from your boss' office of late. I hate to say, but I've needed to take a break from the ideological front lines in order to reenergize my cells for the 2008 campaign season (although, I've been active in local politics this year, spending a lot of time attending fundraisers for Massachusetts Attorney General and Middlesex County DA candidates).

I am keeping my eyes open for terrorists and dissidents at both Borders and the BPL. I will write to let you know if I see anyone suspiscious (i.e., ethnic) looking hanging around in the Government Documents Department on my way through the library (of course, I don't read anything in there - if I'm not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to worry about, right?). In the meantime, I am purging myself of unpure thoughts and sent back my copy of Ultra Kinky, No. 6: Pierced Little Pretties on DVD.

Jingoistically yours,
B.