This was the year I became addicted to my Kindle. I got it in the fall of 2010 but was slow to embrace reading on it, choosing basically not to read. Once I started using it regularly, I was plowing through books and Kindle singles. I read these books (and Kindle Singles) in 2011:

• Willie Nelson: An Epic Life by Joe Nick Patoski Loved it. This is one of those immensely researched biographies and it’s a fan’s dream to have details on every record, every tour and all the personal stories. Not at all like the more or less fictional tales of rock star memoirs.
• Sinner Takes All: A Memoir of Love and Porn by Tera Patrick Eh. This is just another Hollywood tale with no really interesting insights.
• Crazy Girls (Kindle Single) by Max Lance Funny but not crazy enough.
• God, No! by Penn Jillette I ended up loving this book just because Penn is such an enthusiastic storyteller. For the first half I was on the fence since the tone was too ranting for my taste. I’d love to chit-chat with this guy sometime.
• Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir by Dave Mustaine Annoying in that way where the “rockstar” thinks he’s giving you the inside details but he’s really just glossing over a timeline of events. This could have been so much more. And,by the way, Jesus Christ does Mustaine ever have a chip on his shoulder about being kicked out of a band some 30 years ago.
• A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book One by George R. R. Martin I was enjoying this book for almost the entire first half and then it slowed to a crawl. I struggled through it and soon after the halfway point, it picked up speed and I couldn’tput it down. Still, I’m reluctant to dive into the rest of the series.
• Showstopper (Kindle Single) by Abigail Pogrebin Pretty cool story from a girl who at 16 was cast into a Broadway flop by Sondheim called Merrily We Roll Along
• Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway by Cherie Curie Good God, this is disturbing. Curie writes a real no-holds-barred rock memoir. Unfortunately, some very horrible things happen to her and it is quite bleak.
• Cautionary Tales (Kindle Single) by Stephen Tobolowsky You know him as Ned. Ned Ryerson. This short memoir is incredibly hilarious. Please read it. It contains this wisdom: “It is always depressing when the person you are dating asks if you want to have a four-way because the odds are you are the last one of the four in on the plan.”
• Comic Con Strikes Again (Kindle Single) by Douglas Wolk Yep. That’s how it was.
• Air Guitar (Kindle Single) by Griffin Dunne Totally enjoyable.
• Sleepwalk with Me by Mike Birbiglia Really hilarious. But lacking any in-depth coverage of the actual sleepwalking.
• My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up by Russell Brand This is exactly what I expected: an enormous ego-trip disguised as a confessional designed precisely to lure in readers (mostly women) who see it as wonderful heart-on-sleeve openness.
• Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way (Kindle Single) by Jon Krakauer You don’t defraud Jon Krakauer and expect him not to tear your work apart in excruciating detail.
• Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock by Sammy Hagar Well, since I repeated a lot of Sammy’s anecdotes to friends, I think I’d have to say I enjoyed this for the most part. But I really hate the Hollywood formula of memoirs like these that purport to give you the dirt and then have some stupid happy-ending story arc where everything is just working out great for old Sammy Hagar. Talk more about the hard timesand the struggle not just about the luck and success.
• Bossypants by Tina Fey Awesomepants.
• Rework by Jason Fried and 37signals Really amazing no matter what kind of work you do.
• My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, and Drugs, and Guns N’ Roses by Steven Adler So here’s a real dirt disher with no Hollywood ending.
• Slash by Slash Slash does a great job of going through the early days of G’n’R but still has the Hollywood ending. Also he often comes off as a really terrible person which is pretty brave for a rock bio. It’s full of industry bullshit which is understandable since G’n’R were one of the last big industry rock bands. Contains this memorable head-scratcher: “[Scott Weiland] was the best singer to come out in a long time in my opinion.”
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Enjoyed it. Disagree with the sub-title.
• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg LarssonIt took me about 8 months to finish this. The middle section crushed my resolve to finish but once I got through it, it was great.
• The Real Lebowski (Kindle single) by Rich Cohen Pretty interesting article about director John Milius.
• What’s Not To Love by Jonathan Ames Nothing.