Shelf Starter: Tinsel
Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present by Hank Stuever (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24, 9780547134659/0547134657, November 12, 2009)
Opening lines of books we want to read:
Before the Black Friday dawn, the sky is still a mix of dark blue and the sick sodium-vapor saffron of the suburban night. I park by the Beijing Chinese Super Buffet and walk across the lot to Best Buy, where hundreds of people--some in their twelfth or thirteenth hour of standing in line--await the day-after-Thanksgiving doorbuster sale. Best Buy will open at 5 a.m. The shoppers are wrapped in their fleecies, hoodies and wubbies. They have their grande lattes and their Krispy Kremes. Some pitched tents and now have their butts planted on portable reclining chairs that were purchased for the specific act of waiting around, waiting all over America, waiting as they’ve learned to do when Harry Potter novels are released, or when new generations of video game systems come out, or when reality TV producers hold auditions. The line wraps around the big box. A news helicopter flies overhead to show the world itself at the beginning of another holiday season, and the theme never changes. See what it’s come to. Everyone looks up at the sky. Christmas is at our throats again.
--Selected by Marilyn Dahl
