By The Beachwood Reporter’s Book Affairs Desk
A list.
1. Naked Lunch/William S. Burroughs. Rotates with Junky when one or the other gets too popular.
2. Manufacturing Consent/Noam Chomsky. Hipsters acquire key buzzwords as they discover the media sucks.
3. A People’s History of the United States/Howard Zinn. Hipsters discover America isn’t all its cracked up to be. Reading history books stops here, however.
4. Hell’s Angels/Hunter S. Thompson. Because they made a movie of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
5. Population 1280/Jim Thompson. Though the really hip kids prefer Population 1279.
6. Sputnik/Haruki Murakami. USSR chic.
7. A Scanner Darkly/Philip K. Dick. Soon to drop off the list with a Keanu Reaves movie in the offing.
8. Man With the Golden Arm/Nelson Algren. Only for Chicago hipsters. NY hipsters prefer Please Kill Me: The Oral History of Punk Rock/Legs McNeil. LA hipsters stock up on books about the historical conspiracy to do away with streetcars.
9. A Confederacy of Dunces/John Kennedy Toole. The central character disdains pop culture.
10. Anything by Charles Bukowski. Because it’s not cool to pick just one. Besides, none of them are very good.
Posted on March 27, 2006