Title: “Fahrenheit 451”

Author: Ray Bradbury

Rank: 93

Blurb: None. And by this point, none needed.

Review: “If you are a thinker, Faherenheit 451 is book for you. You will also want to read Zollocco: A Novel of Another Universe.”

Customers Also Bought: “Catch-22,” by Joseph Heller

Footnote: Given how the Collected Doorstops of Ayn Rand have been showing up in the Amazon Top 100 lately, we wondered whether there was some bizarre wingnut angle to Bradbury’s classic moving some inventory. False alarm: Bradbury himself — who turns 89 in August — has been making the rounds, with interviews, a new graphic novel of 451, and an appearance at San Diego’s Comic-Con on Saturday.

So we’ll take this moment to give props to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDnet, who came up with the best line about the recent fracas over Amazon deleting books from its reading devices: “If it had been Fahrenheit 451 instead of 1984 or Animal Farm, the Kindles would have probably burst into flames.”

Fahrenheit 451 [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Title: “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power”

Author: Jeff Sharlet

Rank: 6

Blurb: “Sharlet is present when a leader tells a dozen men living there, ‘You guys are here to learn how to rule the world.'” (Publishers Weekly)

Review: “This book is very poorly written about a group of people who are insignificant.”

Customers Also Bought: “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free,” by Charles P. Pierce

Read more »

Title: “Cashless: Bible Prophecy, Economic Chaos, and the Future Financial Order”

Author: Mark Hitchcock

Rank: 9,278

Blurb: “According to Mark Hitchcock, author of several bestselling prophecy books and a trusted expert in this field, what is happening in the world today is consistent with prophecy written in Revelation 13, which predicts a one-world economy under the rule of the Antichrist.”

Review: None. So let’s enjoy more blurb: “Will there be a one-world economy in the end times? What is the mark of the beast? Does modern technology relate to the mark? How does the absence of cash prime things for the Antichrist?”

Read more »

Title: “The Death of Ivan Ilych”

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Rank: 715,269

Blurb: None. But we suspect it doesn’t have a happy ending.

Review: None. Who reads Tolstoy in the summer?

Customers Also Bought: “On Death and Dying,” by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Footnote: Oh, that’s right — it’s time for our monthly Stinque Book Chat! Did everybody finish their assignment?

The Death of Ivan Ilych [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Title: “The Love Dare”

Authors: Stephen Kendrick and Alex Kendrick

Rank: 42

Blurb: “Too many marriages end when someone says ‘I’ve fallen out of love with you’ or ‘I don’t love you anymore.’ The Love Dare discusses how these statements reveal a lack of understanding about the fundamental nature of true love.”

Review: “Now the book itself also consists of a 40-day list of dares. For each day, there’s about a page and a half or so of advice, followed by a specific dare and some space for you to write down your personal reflections. Dares range from things such as practicing patience to writing out a renewal of your vows.”

Customers Also Bought: “Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God,” by Francis Chan

Footnote: We’re incorrigible.

The Love Dare [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Title: “The Trust Committed to Me”

Author: Mark Sanford

Rank: 160,247

Blurb: None. Published in 2000 by the U.S. Term Limits Foundation.

Review: “Unlike the lack of trust committed to my wife and children as I scamper off to Argentina in the dark of night to be with my other family I truly love.”

Customers Also Bought: “Conscience of a Conservative,” by Barry Goldwater

Footnote: Makes a great read on those long international flights!

Bonus: Meet the ghostwriter!

The Trust Committed to Me [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]

Title: “Catastrophe”

Authors: Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Rank: 25

Blurb: “It’s time to take back our country. Now. It’s that simple. It’s that urgent. So begins Dick Morris and Eileen McGann’s latest and most important book. They say that we must act before President Barack Obama fully implements his radical political agenda. Because after Obama has won his war on prosperity and canceled the war on terror, it will be too late to regain our liberty or our security.”

Review: None yet, so let’s enjoy more of the blurb: “In Fleeced, [Morris and McGann] went after the credit card companies, the subprime mortgage lenders, and the hedge fund billionaires who conspired to wreck the economy — and Barack Obama, whose policies, they predicted last summer, would ‘trigger a stock market crash.'”

Customers Also Bought: “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations,” by John Bolton

Footnote: Fleeced was published June 24, 2008. Contrary to the lies you’re told by liberal media, the stock market hasn’t crashed yet.

Catastrophe [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon kickback link]