Just to follow up on John’s comments about the top political sellers for 2007, here are the actual top 15 nonfiction bestsellers:

1. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Atria/Beyond Words (11/06) 4,590,000
2. The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn & Hal Iggulden. Collins (5/07) 1,900,000
3. Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. Collins (10/07) 1,800,000
4. You: Staying Young—The Owner’s Manual for Extending Your Warranty by Michael F. Roizen, M.D., and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. Free Press (10/07) 1,451,945
5. I Am America (and So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert. Grand Central (10/07) 1,422,876
6. Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day by Joel Osteen. Free Press (10/07) 1,181,173
7. The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan & Miriam Peskowitz. Collins (10/07) 1,000,000
8. You: On a Diet—The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management by Michael F. Roizen, M.D., and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. Free Press (10/06) 998,324
9. Guinness World Records 2008. Guinness World Records (8/07) 980,000
10. The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About by Kevin Trudeau. Alliance Publishing (4/07) 825,913
11. Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices & Priorities of a Winning Life by Tony Dungy with Nathan Whitaker. Tyndale House (07/07) 820,124
12. Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny by Suze Orman. Spiegel & Grau (2/07) 753,618
13. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Sarah Crichton (2/07) 611,435
14. Clapton by Eric Clapton. Broadway Books (9/07) 600,756
15. Christmas with Paula Deen: Recipes and Stories from My Favorite Holiday by Paula Deen. Simon & Schuster (10/07) 580,000

Hmm. It must have been a good year, because only a handful of these titles make me sick. It really is incredible that only one political book—and a silly one at that—made the top 15. It sheds a few drops of moisture on the parched, cynical soil of my soul.

That’s not to say that these are particularly brilliant offerings, either. Still, one can’t get too worked up about (reasonable) diet, health, and recipe books. I find it interesting that The Dangerous Book for Boys outsold The Daring Book for Girls by almost double—quite a reverse in the typical trend. But I wouldn’t be surprised if girls are just reading up on the boy stuff.

Those goddamn girls.

You know what we think about The Secret and Kevin “The Felon” Trudeau. Who are the people buying these books? It’s like Mariah Carey—you can’t find a single person who likes her or owns any of her albums, but somehow she’s this amazing superstar. I’d like to put forth another crackpot theory: any person who likes Mariah also owns The Secret. Go on, prove me wrong.

…in order from worst to best.

The two words that come to mind when I think of Family Trust by Amanda Brown are “frivolous” and “dumb.” Brown is the author of the Legally Blonde novel, but having read Family Trust I wonder if the movie’s charm came from elsewhere. At any rate Family Trust seems to have been written solely in the hopes that it, too, would be converted into a Reese Witherspoon film. If we are lucky, it won’t be. The premise of the book is that unmarried parents die in a plane crash, each appointing a separate guardian for the four-year-old left behind. The two different-as-can-be guardians have to learn to get along as they raise their new daughter and then—wocka wocka wocka—fall in love.

The Ivy Chronicles by Karen Quinn lands in the middle of the scale. It’s not a whole lot less frivolous than Family Trust, but there’s a goofy quality about the book—the main character goes on a date with George Clooney; another character gets eaten by an alligator—that reminds me of Janet Evanovich. The plot here centers on New York businesswoman Ivy Ames, who loses her bigshot job and bigshot husband and so launches a company that helps parents get their kids into the best private kindergartens. (Aside: this topic—the snootiness and impossibility of Manhattan kindergartens—seems to deliver endless fascination to chick lit authors and audiences. It appears in both Family Trust and The Nanny Diaries. I kinda don’t get it.) Along the way Ivy does anything to make her clients successful: working with a mobster, painting a little girl black, even selling out her own (Jewish) people for cash. But in the end she regains her dignity and fixes some of her more pronounced value flaws. I recommend this book over Family Trust mainly because it’s sillier and there’s a lot more swearing.

The one I liked the best was Sabine Durrant’s Having It and Eating It, a novel about the shadowy sides of parenting and marriage. By far the most realistic of the three books, Durrant’s novel follows Maggie Owen, a stay-at-home mom of a baby and a toddler who has grown increasingly estranged from her busy advertising exec hubby. Filled with dark humor and adorable British lingo, Having It and Eating It explores the inherent tensions of child-rearing and long-term relationships, the lure of adultery, the peculiar joys and jealousies of women for whom motherhood is a full-time job.

With that, I’m over my chick lit experiment. I never could find any lad lit aside from Nick Hornby (who I think is good but ever-so-slightly overrated); apparently this was a genre more or less invented by publishing houses hoping to bring chick lit to the boys. But they failed—pretty big time—because, of course, most men don’t read fiction that isn’t headlined by the likes of Jack Ryan and Dirk Pitt. Geez, we could have told them that!

Taking a look at the bestselling lists from 2007 and 2008, I have not been surprised that they generally look a lot like those from previous years. But perhaps my pessimism is premature. So far in 2008 there has been one major, wonderful change in America’s bestselling reading: the comparative absence of bestselling political spew. We are already over a third of the way through the election year and there have been only four bestsellers specifically about American politics (remember, in that last presidential election year there were 40—did I mention that I read them all?). And these four take a distinctly different tone than those from the previous decade. Steven Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You) undermines conservatism through humor, not wrath; Glenn Beck’s conservative An Inconvenient Book can be wittily self-effacing. Even Newt Gingrich has climbed onto the bestselling lists by claiming we need Real Change and that America is not divided into red and blue (although, well, it’s still the Left that causes most of the problems). And the ultimate change-fan, Barack Obama, offers his now-famous optimistic take on the future in The Audacity of Hope.

These are the four bestsellers? These silly, hopeful, not-very-angry books? Get outta town.

We keep hearing that Americans are ready for change. Are the bestseller lists evidence that we are making it happen? Are these books a good indication of a change in the zeitgeist? (It’s a well-established law that every essay on culture must use the word zeitgeist—I held off until the last paragraph to keep you in suspense.) Does the success of a woman, an African-American, and a maverick in the primaries suggest we are fed up with acrimonious dichotomies offered us in 2004 in both our reading and our political choices?

We’ll see. Readers still have over half a year to start buying up the latest screed from the radio talk show hosts and New York Times pundits. Can we resist? My guess is that within a few months reasoned debate will be harder to find than Ann Coulter’s maternal instinct or Michael Moore’s copy of The South Beach Diet. But I’m hoping—really, really hoping—that I’m wrong.

Okay, I’m serious now, people. Stop reading James Patterson! He’s just not that good.

The numbers, alas, say otherwise: in addition to the four paperback bestsellers already mentioned in my earlier post, the guy has five hardcover bestsellers as well! Here’s the full list:

1. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Riverhead (5/07) 2,201,865
2. Playing for Pizza by John Grisham. Doubleday (9/07) 1,445,000
3. Double Cross by James Patterson. Little, Brown (11/07) 1,428,974
4. The Choice by Nicholas Sparks. Grand Central (9/07) 1,200,809
5. Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich. St. Martin’s (6/07) 1,116,828
6. Plum Lovin’ by Janet Evanovich. St. Martin’s (1/07) 1,080,686
7. Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell. Putnam (10/07) 1,027,000
8. The Quickie by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Little, Brown (7/07) 795,736
9. The 6th Target by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. Little, Brown (5/07) 769,460
10. The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz. Bantam (11/07) 740,000
11. Step on a Crack by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Little, Brown (2/07) 732,702
12. You’ve Been Warned by James Patterson and Howard Roughan. Little, Brown (9/07) 724,713
13. T Is for Trespass by Sue Grafton. Putnam (12/07) 716,582
14. Stone Cold by David Baldacci. Grand Central (11/07) 670,590
15. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Atria Books (3/07) 609,000

The saddest thing about this unsurprising list is that not a single new novelist made it this year. Though I’m not a passionate fan of Mr. Hosseini, I guess I can be glad that the number one title was a literary offering.

Mostly, though, I keep thinking about Sue Grafton. I honestly remember seeing these same Kinsey Millhone books in the store when I was a child. How can Grafton not be wanting to gnaw off her own fingers at this point? And does some brilliant psychotic meltdown await her when the alphabet runs out? I worry about her. I really do.

It’s been suggested by some readers here that I look into the chick lit phenomenon, a genre we skipped in Why We Read What We Read because it simply isn’t bestselling—at least not bestselling enough to thrust a title into the top 15 for any one year. Still, one really can’t ignore the hot pink drawings gracing innumerable slim paperbacks at one’s local bookstore. These titles occupy premium display space at the chain stores, proof enough that they are selling in very satisfying quantities indeed.

As a clueless outsider, I wasn’t sure even what “chick lit” really was. After all, 70% of literary fiction is read by women, and with even autobiographical journeys like Eat, Pray, Love scoring big with the ladies, it wasn’t clear to me that all of those offerings didn’t qualify. However, according to the book reviewers over at ChickLitBooks.com, chick lit is women’s fiction of a very special type:

It’s all in the tone. Chick lit is told in a more confiding, personal tone. It’s like having a best friend tell you about her life….Humor is a strong point in chick lit, too….THAT is what really separates chick lit from regular women’s fiction.

Got it. Less Maya Angelou, more Bridget Jones.

I also learned that chick lit, like romantic fiction, comes in multiple sub-genres. You’ve got City Girl Lit, and Wedding Lit, and Hen Lit (for “older” women in their 30s to 60s). You’ve got Christian Lit, “Bigger Girl” Lit, even “Lad Lit” that’s written by and about men (but in that all-important light and humorous tone).

I started with Mom Lit. It seemed like it would be different from The Nanny Diaries (which I did read once) and Sex and the City (which I still watch a lot) without veering too far into one of the more peculiar branches of the genre.

And I started with a powerhouse: Jennifer Weiner. Though chick lit hasn’t broken through to an annual list’s top 15, Weiner is still a bestselling author who sold nearly 300,000 copies of The Guy Not Taken in 2007. That’s not the book I read, though. I picked up Little Earthquakes, a story about women who meet in a prenatal yoga class and become friends, supporting each other through their trials with their husbands and new babies.

Well, I wasn’t very impressed. I just felt so neutral about this book: it wasn’t horribly boring, but it wasn’t terribly interesting. And, disappointingly, despite the promises of ChickLitBooks.com, it just wasn’t that funny. It was light, certainly, and it had scenes that I know were supposed to be funny, but the only thing that I thought was genuinely amusing was when the women took turns tossing yarmulkes across the room at their babies’ bare heads.

Of course, a book needn’t be funny if it has depth, but I thought Little Earthquakes was lacking in that department as well. It wasn’t really about anything—except that caring for an infant is really, really hard. That’s all true, and I can see the book being comforting to overworked new moms (if they would even have time to read it), but I just needed more.

Halfway through, in fact, I needed so much more that I swapped Little Earthquakes for Tom Perrotta’s Little Children. Both the titular and thematic similarities were coincidental, but the comparison well demonstrated what I want from a novel that my foray into chick lit just wasn’t delivering.

Themes. Themes! Themes!! I like my books to be about something bigger, to comment upon the human condition, to explore our tweaked-out selves in some thoughtful way. It’s not a matter of topic: like Weiner, Perrotta writes about parents, children, marriage, and suburban life. But he does it in a way that’s so much less shallow, so much less predictable, and just—honestly—so much better.

His story follows a number of befuddled characters: a stay-at-home mom who can’t quite figure how she ever ended up married with a child; a hot stay-at-home dad who sneaks out at night to watch skateboarders instead of studying for the bar exam he’s failed twice; an angry retired cop with an agenda; a panty-sniffer; and yes, even a child molester. Perhaps these dark edges give Perrotta an immediate literary advantage. But either way, he works his theme both literally and figuratively: the characters are linked by the “little children” around which their lives revolve, while also becoming helpless “little children” themselves in the face of their own desires.

After finishing Little Children, I did eventually get to the embarrassingly shallow ending of Little Earthquakes, in which all is magically resolved. What’s so strange to me is that Weiner goes out of her way to crystallize the genuine, overwhelming difficulty of motherhood, but then gives us an ending that glazes over all the problems she’s spent 400 pages cataloging. Does realism not apply to denouements? Perrotta’s ending, on the other hand, manages to be generally positive without undermining the issues and complexities explored in the novel.

I wonder—and this is a theory, not a statement—if one difference between literary and genre fiction is how they deal with truth: the former dishes it out relentlessly while the latter can’t quite look it in the eye.

We’ll see. I’m not judging all chick lit based on this one book. I’ll be back with reviews of Family Trust, Having It and Eating It, and maybe some of that quirky “Lad Lit” if I can get my hands on it.

Here they be.

1. Blood Brothers. Nora Roberts. Orig. Jove (2,247,730)
2. Cross. James Patterson. Rep. Grand Central (1,831,296)
3. Angels Fall. Nora Roberts. Rep. Jove (1,655,329)
4. Judge & Jury. James Patterson & Andrew Gross. Rep. Grand Central (1,653,623)
5. Beach Road. James Patterson & Peter de Jonge. Rep. Grand Central (1,645,810)
6. Honeymoon. James Patterson & Howard Roughan. Rep. Grand Central (1,638,139)
7. Next. Michael Crichton. Rep. Harper (1,600,000)
8. Twelve Sharp. Janet Evanovich. Rep. St. Martin’s (1,500,000)
9. At Risk. Patricia Cornwell. Rep. Berkley (1,445,075)
10. The Collectors. David Baldacci. Rep. Grand Central (1,286,410)
11. Two Little Girls in Blue. Mary Higgins Clark. Rep. Pocket (1,231,500)
12. True Believer. Nicholas Sparks. Rep. Grand Central (1,205,824)
13. Echo Park. Michael Connelly. Rep. Grand Central (1,068,053)
14. At First Sight. Nicholas Sparks. Rep. Grand Central (1,035,993)
15. Dead Watch. John Sandford. Rep. Berkley (1,005,314)

Look at James Patterson go! He’s clearly still well utilizing the practice of getting authorial hopefuls to write his books. Interesting, though, how the title that was Patterson’s alone—Cross—sold ever so slightly more copies. Coincidence? Or do people actually dislike diluted Pattersons?

Nora Roberts is also still pumping out the books and raking in the checks, though this year she only had two titles in the top 15, for a total of almost four million copies. Impressive, sure, but compare to last year’s four titles and nine million copies (not to mention the comparative 4.3 million copies that Eat, Pray, Love sold—further kudos to Elizabeth Gilbert!). Perhaps she’s finally decided to take it easy, publishing only, you know, ten books a year or so. Hey, even cyborgs need a vacation.

And one has to ask (though one wishes she didn’t notice) where is Dan Brown? In 2006 he scaled both the Trade Paperback and Mass Market Paperback lists with over nine million copies of his novels sold; this year not a single one of his books sold even 100,000 copies. The list-dominator has simply vanished! Is his own shocking disappearance part of an elaborate promotional plan for his next novel…or has every single person in America finally read The Da Vinci Code?

Okay, they’ve been here, it turns out, for almost a month. But Publisher’s Weekly has this sneaky way of burying each year’s numbers in its voluminous archives, hiding their presence even from its own search engine. Very secretive, those folks.

PW publishes four different lists: Hardcover Fiction, Hardcover Nonfiction, Trade Paperbacks (both fiction and nonfiction), and Mass Market Paperbacks (fiction, often of the genre variety). Shall we start with the top fifteen Trade Paperbacks? (Click here for the full list.)

1. Eat, Pray, Love. Elizabeth Gilbert. Rep. Penguin (4,274,804)
2. The Kite Runner. Khaled Hosseini. Rep. Riverhead (2,022,041)
3. Water for Elephants. Sara Gruen. Rep. Algonquin (1,450,000)
4. The Road. Cormac McCarthy. Rep. Vintage (1,364,722)
5. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Kim Edwards. Rep. Penguin (1,362,585)
6. The Pillars of the Earth. Ken Follett. Rep. NAL (1,310,419)
7. Love in the Time of Cholera. Gabriel García Márquez. Rep. Vintage (1,298,554)
8. 90 Minutes in Heaven. Don Piper and Cecil Murphey. Orig. Revell (1,273,000)
9. Jerusalem Countdown. John Hagee. Revised. Frontline (1,200,000)
10. Middlesex. Jeffrey Eugenides. Rep. Picador (1,000,000)
11. Measure of a Man. Sidney Poitier. Orig. HarperOne (1,000,000)
12. Skinny Bitch. Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. Orig. Running Press (987,000)
13. Into the Wild. Jon Krakauer. Rep. Anchor (918,234)
14. Three Cups of Tea. Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Rep. Penguin (843,390)
15. The 5th Horseman. James Patterson & Maxine Paetro. Rep. Grand Central (707,340)

The majority of these are no surprise. Eat, Pray, Love. Yes, yes. The Kite Runner. Yes, yes. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter—last year’s number two. A third of these books are associated with Oprah in some way.

It’s numbers 8 and 9 that make me think things went a little wonky in ‘07. I’m dismayed to see that 90 Minutes in Heaven—a book detailing a near-death experience and resulting life of devout Christianity—has actually gained in popularity (it was #9 last year), now selling a total of around 2 million copies. Funny how James Frey gets skewered for fabricating parts of his memoir, yet anyone can write these “visit to heaven” books with no proof whatsoever of their authenticity—and no one seems to care!

Sure, 90 Minutes in Heaven could have been a flukey favorite, but number 9 suggests instead that America’s religious curiosity is all aflame. The purpose of Jerusalem Countdown, written by some nutjob pastor, is to demonstrate through biblical prophecy how America’s prickly issues with Iran may lead to the Apocalypse. And people bought 1.2 million copies of it.

Of course, the presence of religious books on an annual bestseller list can also indicate a general case of the societal willies. In troubling times, even the confused and indifferent start reading the darnedest things. The two titles here are so typical of our culture’s hysterical extremism: we want to scare the crap out of ourselves with looming conflicts both material and supernatural, yet be reminded that redemption is available with just a little faith. So different, yet so comforting: for even as his horrors spill from heaven, Pastor Hagee reminds us that a plan governs the universe and all our lives.

I’m sorry to see that no first-time novelists scored this year, though one certainly can’t begrudge literary author and relative newcomer Sara Gruen her number-three spot for Water for Elephants.

Best book on the list: The Road. Followed closely by Pillars of the Earth and Middlesex.

Worst book on the list: Jerusalem Countdown. I think I can safely say this without reading a single word.

Never has a woman embodied that old saying “when a door closes, another one opens” quite like Elizabeth Gilbert.

There she was, married and nesting, trying to get preggers, when she realized that women who really want husbands and babies probably don’t sob for hours every night on their bathroom floors. Three years and one nasty divorce later, Gilbert had lost it all. Broke and bereft, she had no idea where to go or what to do.

Then her publisher had a great idea. They’d give Gilbert an advance that would enable her to travel abroad for a year, writing the book that would become the mega-bestseller Eat, Pray, Love.

Some people have all the luck.

Gilbert segmented her trip—and her book—into three equal parts. The first stop was Italy, home of gastronomic and linguistic pleasure; next came India, where all the serious people go to connect with God; finally, Bali, to learn…erm…something about balance. If you’ve been trolling this blog for a while, you’ll know I was not particularly keen to read Eat, Pray, Love, but I will happily admit that the book was much better than I feared. Gilbert’s writing is witty and charmingly self-deprecating, and she has a wonderful way of drawing threads through the story that make the whole journey—or at least the resulting book—cohesive and complete.

The section on Italy will make you drool. Hell, it’ll probably make you fat. (Is there a volume of Eat This Not That for Italian food? It’s probably Not That! No, Not That Either!) Gilbert’s life in Italy is almost unbearably dreamy. She does nothing but whatever she wants, every day—mainly eating gelato and speaking Italian—for four pound-packing months.

Oh, it hurts not to be her.

But I stopped feeling so envious in part two, when Gilbert heads to India for four months of spiritual calisthenics. I’m sure her descriptions are all very insightful and magical…but if you are not especially spiritual or into meditation you may find this portion of the book boring. Or loony. I sort of wanted to pat her on the head the whole time and say, “Sure, lady. Mm-hmm.” (And I’m not the only one. I talked to two genuine grade-A middle-aged moms—the demographic voted Most Likely to Inhale This Book—and even they skipped parts of this section.)

Finally, Gilbert whiles away the final leg of her journey in Bali, and in her search for balance she’s back to her old witty ways. Her portrayal of the culture and characters of this tiny Indonesian island is both charming and fascinating. And by the end, the broken woman we met at the beginning of the story has become happy, balanced, and whole.

So I gotta say that overall I was pleasantly surprised. Hear me now—Eat, Pray, Love is a thoughtful and enjoyable book.

But I do have to bring up one teensy weensy little thing.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that so brazenly celebrated self-absorption. I know, I know—it’s the genre. It’s what Gilbert’s publishers paid for. I get it. Still, what is with female readers and their excessive navel-gazing? Unlike most literary works, which at least cover a number of characters and ideas, this book is literally about one person. It’s kind of about the pursuit of pleasure; it’s kind of about praying; it’s kind of about balance. But mostly it’s about Elizabeth Gilbert. In short, one of America’s very favorite reads for the past 61 weeks is about someone who spends a year doing nothing but thinking about herself. Is this the new American dream? Looking at our literature, it certainly seems that way. Too bad only the very very fortunate get paid for it.

Unlike my chatty colleague in crime, it’s been several months since I spent focused time with bestsellers. Let’s call it “Da Vinci fatigue.” Did you miss me? Hmmn. Well, let’s pretend you did, and that you’re excited that I’m starting to get the itch again. Maybe it’s the anticipation of the appearance of Publishers Weekly’s bestselling lists for 2007. Maybe it’s spring fever. Maybe it’s just that rash again (don’t ask). In any case, a few weeks ago I plunged right back into the bestselling pond. Well, okay, not so much plunged as put my toe in, scouring the bestseller lists so far in 2008. And it turned out the water felt awfully familiar.

Predictable names dominate the fiction lists: Patterson, Evanovich, Albom, Cornwell, and of course the unstoppable trio of Grisham and Roberts and King (oh my!). Fitness, diet, and cookbooks are still the rage. Spiritual guides clog many of the top spots, including the inestimable advice of Montel Williams. For those not interested in his Living Well, there are dozens of vampire tales for the living dead. Business guides flourish, of course, proving once again novelist Chris Buckley’s wisdom that the only way to get rich from a get-rich book is to write one.  The ephemeral joys of pop biography (Tom Cruise) and auto-biography (Steve Martin) continue to appeal. Adding increased auctoritas to a relatively mundane collection are such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird, Night, Green Eggs and Ham, and Good Morning Moon. Oh, and of course, there’s that perennial spellbinder, The Official SAT Study Guide.

But there are a couple major differences between previous years and the 2008 lists so far. One is the remarkable absence of political spew in an election year. (I’ll have more to say about what this may signify at a later date, but that’s actually a substantive issue and I’m trying to keep this as shallow as possible. You don’t want to dive too deeply too fast into this bestseller stuff.) The most striking deviation from the past is in the titles, and I think our Why We Read What We Read may have had a salutary influence on the industry. The publishing titans no doubt read our analysis and jumped into action. In our survey of bestselling books over the past 16 years, we noted that there was an odd reliance on the number 7 (see pages 40-1). But so far bestsellers in 2008 have provided an unprecedented and nearly algebraic variety: Three Cups of Tea (due out soon, its sequel: Eight Trips to the Bathroom), 4-Hour Work Week, The Five Love Languages, The Six Sacred Stones, 12 Second Sequence (no, it’s not about sex), The Thirteenth Tale, Nineteen Minutes, 21 Pounds in 21 Days, 90 Minutes in Heaven (which beats Nineteen Minutes by over an hour), and, pummeling all others in numerical dust, A Thousand Splendid Suns. The author of The Nine was apparently so confident in the number that he felt it could stand alone as a bestselling noun.

It’s nice to know we’ve made a difference.

Holy crap, what a dumb name for a book. I know it’s been on the bestseller charts for a while, but I’ve been ignoring it because 1) it’s a diet book, yawn and 2) its title is so exceedingly lame.

But last night John and I went out in the world and spied this little volume with our own eyes. And I realized when I saw the cover that this was not your typical benign-but-forgettable book of diet advice.

See, the title wasn’t just the result of a lazy or uninspired author. Eat This Not That is literally the point of the whole book: it provides specific suggestions for what to eat and what not to eat at some of America’s most popular chain restaurants. Try the chili onion rings, not the nacho cheese bacon poppers. Order the fried butter, not the ham-and-lard sandwich. In other words, eat this [unhealthy garbage] instead of that [even more unhealthy garbage]. The book features two pages for each establishment—Applebee’s, Taco Bell, Cici’s Pizza—providing a list of thises and thats for each beloved, nasty greasehole.

Boy is this the perfect “diet” book for the modern era. Only Americans could be so retarded as to think that eating a Big Mac instead of a Whopper with Cheese will help them lose weight (yes, this is actually one of the proffered suggestions). That people would seriously buy and recommend this book (it’s got almost five stars on Amazon)—and that someone in good conscience could publish it—absolutely boggles the mind.

The only merit to Eat This Not That, I would say, is that it exposes just how horrible and fattening this kind of food really is. Even I didn’t know that a plate of Denny’s pancakes packs a walloping 980 calories, and I’m pretty obnoxious when it comes to caloric awareness. The book also goes on to offer general suggestions for making healthier food choices, but frankly the main thrust of the content is so ridiculous that I can’t give Eat This Not That even the teensiest endorsement. But maybe that’s not entirely fair. After all, while dieting you could be kidnapped and forced to eat at Popeye’s, and then this book would be totally useful. Riiight.

Look, I’m not saying I never ever eat this type of food—I do—but never would I dream that it was going to result in anything but bulges and flab. The plain truth is that no dieter should even breathe the fumes of any of these restaurants, and the fact that thousands of people are buying a book like Eat This Not That shows we are nowhere near to facing, let alone solving, our ever-swelling obesity epidemic.