(Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions [SIGNED COPY, FIRST PRINTING]

Almond, Steve

ISBN 10: 1400066190 / ISBN 13: 9781400066193

Published by Random House (NY), New York, 2007

About this Item

Very good in very good dust jacket. SIGNED and inscribed by the author on half-title page. 1st edition, 1st printing, complete number line. Dust jacket essentially as new except for a chip at the top. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 288 p. Audience: General/trade. Softening to base of spine. By the author of 'Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life' and 'Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America'. Where possible, all books come with dust jacket in a protective mylar sleeve, sealed in a ziplock bag, wrapped in bubble wrap, shipped in a box.

Seller Inventory # Alibris.0004210

Bibliographic Details

• Title: (Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions [SIGNED COPY, FIRST PRINTING]
• Publisher: Random House (NY), New York
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1400066190
• ISBN 13: 9781400066193
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

How does Steve Almond get himself into so much trouble? Could it be his incessant moralizing? His generally poor posture? The fact that he was raised by a pack of wolves? Frankly, we haven’t got a clue. What we do know is that Almond has a knack for converting his dustups into essays that are both funny and furious. In (Not that You Asked), he squares off against Sean Hannity on national TV, nearly gets arrested for stealing “Sta-Hard” gel from his local pharmacy, and winds up in Boston, where he quickly enrages the entire population of the Red Sox Nation. Almond is, as they say in Yiddish, a tummler.

Almond on personal grooming: “Why, exactly, did I feel it would be ‘sexy’ and ‘hot’ to have my girlfriend wax my chest? I can offer no good answer to this question today. I could offer no good answer at the time.”
On sports: “To be a fan is to live in a condition of willed helplessness. We are (for the most part) men who sit around and watch other men run and leap and sweat and grapple each other. It is a deeply homoerotic pattern of conduct, often interracial in nature, and essentially humiliating.”
On popular culture: “I have never actually owned a TV, a fact I mention whenever possible, in the hopes that it will make me seem noble and possibly lead to oral sex.”
On his literary hero, Kurt Vonnegut: “His books perform the greatest feat of alchemy known to man: the conversion of grief into laughter by means of courageous imagination.”
On religion: “Every year, when Chanukah season rolled around, my brothers and I would make the suburban pilgrimage to the home of our grandparents, where we would ring in the holiday with a big, juicy Chanukah ham.”

The essays in (Not that You Asked) will make you laugh out loud, or, maybe just as likely, hurl the book across the room. Either way, you’ll find Steve Almond savagely entertaining. Not that you asked.

“A pop-culture-saturated intellectual, a kindly grouch, vitriolic Boston Red Sox hater, neurotic new father and Kurt Vonnegut fanatic… [Almond] scores big in every chapter of this must-have collection. Biting humor, honesty, smarts and heart: Vonnegut himself would have been proud.”
—— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

Steve Almond is the author of the story collections My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the nonfiction book Candyfreak, and the novel Which Brings Me to You, co-written with Julianna Baggott. He lives outside Boston with his wife, Erin, and daughter, Josephine, whom he cannot stop kissing. Visit the author at www.stevenalmond.com.