On the plus side, it’s clear this was not a ghostwritten memoir by the woman most folks know as the evil caricature Sue Sylvester on “Glee.”

And, Lynch is fairly open and candid about her life and some of her more unpleasant personality traits (starting with closeted homosexuality that eases into a general discomfort about gay folks, an alcohol addiction that may have been true alcoholism or just generalized anxiety and sadly, the musings of psychobabble that therapy talk that apparently led to the book’s title).

For the most part, though, the humor is a bit too wry and a bit too absent for the book to be funny. And learning about how Jane Lynch had to learn to love Jane Lynch does not mean you end up loving Jane Lynch.

I do love Jane Lynch, the actress. Lynch remains a hilarious performer, with comedic timing to die for, in just about everything she does.

But Jane Lynch, regular person, just doesn’t come across as someone I’d particularly want to meet for coffee the way I do Tina Fey.

That’s fine. Really. I don’t want to damage what I know unfortunately know is her sensitive self-esteem. I’d just rather watch her perform that know about her string of pals who became lifelong friends or hear her thoughts about learning to be open and trusting about her own abilities and character.

Book 14
Sex and the Kitty: A Celebrity Meowmoir – Nancy the Cat

This was a freebie given by the owners of a local bookstore on its last day. You can tell by the title it’s not exactly for deep thinkers.

And really, before I owned a cat, I doubt I would have read this. I kinda hated all the mysteries written by cats or with cats, for instance.

But you do need to have a bit of insight into some of the insane things that cats do – perfectly sane cats, otherwise – to appreciate the silliness and tongue-in-cheek humor here. Nancy is a black kitten, just a normal mutt of a cat, who aches for adventure and exploring her peoples’ British town. Then she falls hard for Mr. Kit-E-Licious, the face on the packets of cat food her people feed her, and decides she must be famous to meet him.

That’s your plot, thin and as hackneyed as every other Mr. Big ripoff. But Carrie never had the insights Nancy does. My favorite: What birds are actually saying when we hear them chirp (turns out, cats hate them because they have the following conversation every morning for hours: “Where are you?” “I’m over here” “Where?” “Over here. Are you over there?”)

So it’s silly but it has its charm. And it’s a quick read when you just need something goofy to brighten your day.

Book 15
Steak – Mark Schatzker

From Texas to Japan, Scotland to Argentina, this food writer is looking for the perfect steak and the science that makes it so.

Alas, it turns out that the road to the best flavor is something even scientists don’t understand. After predictably trying, then rejecting corn-fed bovine right out of the gate, Schatzker slowly appreciates the offerings of grass-fed cattle. Too bad, though, that the grass itself can be the problem if a hunk of meat ends up tasting, as he says, like an old “abscessed organ left in the trunk of a car sitting in a Miami parking lot for two weeks in July.

Vegan yet?

No, me neither. My childhood dinners consisted of red meat at least four times a week, sometimes more. Steak was something out of reach for my mother growing up, so she was adamant that beef in general and steak in particular would be on the menu for her kids.

But even she knew what Schatzker spends way too much time dwelling on. Sometimes, if you didn’t like the steak, you’ll have to talk to the cow.

The title is a bit misleading (though the life of flabby lovesick Oscar, with his penchant for Tolkien and inherent dorkiness is key), though. The sad, Spanglish tale herein is about the fuku, or curse, running through the de Leon family, from Beli’s days in Santo Domingo to her children’s lives as heirs to the Dominican diaspora in New Jersey.

Honestly, I can see where folks who don’t speak Spanish could have trouble understanding some central moments and feelings, so much does Diaz love to throw in a Spanglish word at critical plot points.

But, that’s the only real complaint I would have about a story that challenges stereotypes, draws characters and scenes that leap off the page, offers a compact history of a little-known country – all while telling the small story of one boy’s heartbreak at desperately wanting to fit in, to be loved without compromise.

12. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error – Kathryn Schulz

It sure does feel good to be right.

But as Schulz describes in this essay book that spans history, philosophy, psychology and a bit of pop culture, there is actual more value in getting it wrong.

That is, errors can be useful in developing scientific theories, creating art, building comic moments . Basically, they make our lives richer and fuller than would an ideal existence.

That proposal has its detractors, not the least of which would be many of Schulz’s fellow journalists. No reporter wants to get it wrong, ever. Even a minor mistake can throw an entire concept into doubt.

Think, too, of the model rational thinker, arriving at a decision only after cooling weighing factual information. This, western philosophy believes, will give us the right conclusion.

And we also fear being wrong so much that we often opt for denial, even in the face of overwhelming contradiction (think Holocaust deniers, or climate change refusers).

Yet, we often know better on some level. Sartes suggests we can only live in denial when we know the truth well enough to hide it from ourselves.

Schulz turns that idea on its head, suggesting better uses for our energy in trying to trick ourselves. Why realize instead that our ability to err is uniquely human and gives us the creativity to accomplish great things?

My favorite part is when she delves into what the refusal of error can create. That is, we go through three stages when we encounter people whose beliefs we find wrong. First stage: They are ignorant, for if they knew what we are so certain about, they would surely agree with us. Second, we find them idiots, for now they have been shown our rightness but still reject us. Finally, we conclude they must be evil. How else to reject the One and Only Way?

Sound like any political fights you have ever had? Or maybe a fun family diversion about religion over Thanksgiving turkey?

Indeed, one of Schulz’s main points is that rigid certainty and the plan to erase error were behind some of our darkest moments in history. Why? Looking back, we can see that being wrong often feels so much like being right, and sure does feel good.

Better, then, to learn to enjoy being wrong. Research, Einstein said, is named because we don’t know what we’re doing. There is joy in that, too.

The second in the Hunger Games trilogy does an interesting thing: It clearly lines up with all the foreshadowing in the first book and still manages to be get us somewhere.

I was a bit surprised to enjoy the first book so much, given I a) don’t like science fiction all that much and b) am no longer anything resembling a young adult, unless you count a serious immature streak.

But I really felt Collins was trying to say something in her Orwellian epic. How far can the powerful go to hold onto its power, even if it no longer understands how it got such authority the first place?

“Catching Fire” tries to answer that, starting with the problems that have hit Katniss in the aftermath of her “win” that marks her as a problem to the Capitol. There is clearly no where else for her to go, except back into the arena, when her rebelliousness sparks an actual rebellion.

The book unfolds like the teenage mind, a gradual realization of what is really happening in the midst of all the busy activity that borders on chaos. Things move quickly before you can sort them out because you don’t have the precocious mind or supernatural skills that populate most young adult creations.

There is also a lot of true darkness, of the most human kind, in both books. Any set-up that revolves a fight to the death among children can hardly escape it. But the violence escalates in a way that makes it clear there will actually be something to say in Book Three.

2. Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins

No one pushes against the status quo like a teen ager, and no feels more aggrieved than a child at the arbitrary and, God forbid, the unfair.

Now imagine that unfair world calls you and your peers to battle to the death, to pay for your fathers’ sins of rebelling against a corrupt regime. In this kind of world, unjust is the name of the game. Until a symbol of hope comes in the form of something created only for that sort of destruction but offers hope instead.

That’s what a mockingjay is, after all. The bird is a hybrid of a weapon Capitol leaders created to spy on rebels, only to release them to the elements when their plan backfired. They adapted well to the wild and evolved into an entirely new and unexpected create.

And that’s what Katniss is, after all. This leader of a rebellion was created by a Capitol that hoped for destruction. And now the teenager who is sorting through the fairness of the world compared with her own expectations must challenge both that leadership and the morally questionable rebels.

In other words, Katniss is growing up. Children rail against the unfair because they envision an order from such black-and-white expectations.

The real world, the world Katniss lives in, doesn’t offer such simple definitions. Neither offers neatly tied happy endings, either.

That doesn’t mean Katniss and her creator won’t have something to say about our hopes for a simple solution and the sacrifices we make or refuse along the way.

There is also something to be said about violence and another gruesome reality: playing to the cameras and our obsession with how we look regardless of what battles we fight.

It’s rare to see a book, or a series, that has a point it really wants to make. Challenging authority is a fight we all undertake in one way or another. The question remains, though, whether that is a true battle or just entertainment.

3. If You Ask Me (And Of Course You Won’t) – Betty White

CG snagged this from the library, and I read it after she left it laying on the coffee table. It’s a very fast read, with chapters lasting sometimes just one or two pages.

But that just makes reading Betty White’s writing about as much fun as listening to her talk. She’s charming and open, making for a very chatty if not very dense book. She readily acknowledges that she is not a comedian, so the jokes don’t stack up. Instead, you just get her take on what she thinks you’d ask if you had the moment.

I rather enjoyed the diversion. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that my Mom looks a lot like Betty, especially when they were both younger. But I like Betty anyway. Hee.

4. Cool, Calm and Contentious – Merrill Markoe

Before Tina Fey was The Tina Fey, Merrill Markoe was marking time with witty writing and silly show business work. If you know her at all, you know she is former head writer for the David Letterman Show and creator of Stupid Pet Tricks.

But as this collection of humorous and poignant essays proves, she is so much more. She’s the woman whose gift for seeing the absurd comes directly from a harsh and critical mother: no audience would, could, ever be as judgmental as she. That reality and growing self-awareness of her own good nature seems to have jelled for her throughout her career.

My favorite essay is that on Celebrcimes, or the tragic intersection of celebrities and illegal acts whose history she traces from the good old days, when celebrities tried a little harder NOT to be the bad guy.

That’s at the end of the book. Along the way, you’ll also get her take on training dogs (she has four); sexual assault ( as in, her own) and an all-female whitewater trip (think healing circles and aligning chakras; she already did).

I’d like to think this book could push Markoe to household-name status, but it’s not likely. But if you like your sarcasm edgy but no corrosive, and a bit of self-reflection tossed in for good measure, I’d highly recommend this book.

5. Hero At Large – Janet Evanovich

Mostly romance, with a little comedy sprinkled along the way, this is the sort of book that Evanovich wrote before she created Stephanie Plum.

Thank God she moved on. The romance is corny, the humor is cliché and the writing is just sorrowful.

I mean, unless she was going for overly cute with a formulaic plot line and dismal narrative arc. In that case, she totally knocked it out of the park.

And actually, I have only read a few of the Plum novels, mostly, during the 2004 election campaign in Florida. A bunch of fellow reporters would swap out audio books if we were driving across that massive state. Plum seemed to be something all ages, genders and backgrounds could agree on.

I like to think we’d have that same unity on how dreadful the earlier work is, too.

6. The Lost Dogs – Jim Gorant

This summer will mark the five-year anniversary of the raid on Moonlight Drive in Surry, Virginia that uncovered a dogfighting ring being run by NFL star Michael Vick.

Vick served a little more than a year on his federal conviction and is already back playing football. The dogs that were brutalized – forced to fight, used as bait dogs and generally beaten or ignored – haven’t had such as easy road.

Gorant, a writer with Sports Illustrated, tells the tale of the dogs left in the wake of the bust and how so many people, from so many backgrounds and points of interest, worked to see them saved. The unlikely mix of supporters ended up saving two-thirds of the dogs from the farm.

His storytelling is exceptional, dropping details about character and animals you care about as he tries to also make the case for pit bulls, which he finds the latest breed – after bloodhounds, German shepherds and Dobermans – to be considered “tough-guy dogs.”

7. Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan – Nicholas Jubber

Given all the news about Iran and Afghanistan in my lifetime, it always seems a good idea to sample nonfiction that looks at the people of that Persian land.

This offering is part travelogue, part memoir and part history of Persia and Persian culture from a journalist and playwright who is clearly enamored with the Middle East (he used to work as a teacher in Jerusalem). His guide, and ours, is the 11th-century epic poem, Shahnameh (“The Book of Kings”).

As he travels from Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, he discovers the thousand-year-old text is a living testament to the culture and mindset of Persians around the region.

Part of it is understanding what is, basically, pop culture and history combined. Using the author Ferdowsi’s couplets, a taxi driver sounds off about the Arab invasion 14 centuries ago, still as fresh as 9-11 would be to an American. A woman at an underground Tehran club points out the thrash metal song that has the dance floor packed is simply someone singing a story in the poem.

The epic also proves to be a political guidepost, such as when an Afghan mujahid says, “If you read the Shahnameh, you can understand why we will never let foreigners rule our country.”

There are faults, such as Jubber’s awkward attempts to be poetic himself in describing the scenery or people. He is far better at summarizing history and retelling stories than trying to rise above clichés in his own writing.

But overall, there is a clear sense that understanding Persian speakers is far more complicated than today’s, or even this lifetime’s, events.  Perhaps reading the Shahnameh should be required for State Department and Pentagon officials before they are allowed to have any say on what exactly Persia is, has been and will always be.

8. Margin of Error – Edna Buchanan

It’s worth noting that there is now a TV reporter named Britt Montero, a younger journalist working at the Fox affiliate in Phoenix.

But back when Buchanan – a Pulitzer-prize winning crime reporter for the Miami Herald – began writing mysteries, Montero was her fictional alter ego.

(Buchanan is something of a legend in reporting circles for what is one of the best news story ledes of all times on a story about an ex-con who pushed his way to the counter at a fried-chicken joint, only to be convinced to wait in line. But when Gary Robinson made it to the counter, the place had run out of fried chicken so he took a swing at the counter girl and was shot by a security guard in the resulting chaos. Her summary” Gary Robinson died hungry.”)

But I digress. Buchanan has been turning clever phrases in fiction for decades now. This is an oldie but goodie about Montero, struggling with PTSD after shooting a serial killer, having to deal with a Hollywood star in town to film a movie. The tension comes from the star’s stalker and constant near-death experiences that begin to escalate as the film progresses.

Sometimes going back to an author you know and a book you once enjoyed turns out to be exactly the right way to have fun again.

Several federal agencies launched a series of raids and actions in 2004 that ended up devastating the Philadelphia Muslim community in general and Mohamed Ghorab in particular.

Ghorab was an Egyptian immigrant who set up his own small mosque in a run-down area in Philadelphia who, like so many other Muslims after 9/11, was wrongly accused of terrorism.

One moment he is with his wife, dropping their daughter off at school. Federal agents and police surround and arrest him in front of his terrified daughter and classmates, rushing him off to jail. The federal government would ultimately deport Ghorab, crippling his small house of worship, over disbelief that his years-long marriage was legitimate. No evidence of any violent activities, or even violent rhetoric, could ever be found.

Salisbury looks at Ghorab’s case as an example of the fearful overreaction following the terrorist attacks, efforts designed to improve national security that may have done nothing more than flame anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hysteria.

The author, a culture writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer and son of a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter, also recalls the paranoia and government surveillance of him and his family as his father covered the Soviet Union.

At times, Salisbury relies too much on his own history and opinions. But that is a minor quibble with a narrative that creates an uncommon portrait of America and American ideals in the face of fear.

10. Sellevision – Augusten Burroughs

Satire is a lost art. I had a conversation recently with a friend, noting that “The Hunger Games” was actually a brilliant piece of satire about our TV-obsessed and “reality” loving culture. Another friend looked at us like we were crazy, insisting satire must be funny. I didn’t say it, but my first thought was that he should really read some Swift.

But to be fair, Burroughs is far more what folks generally regard as satire. He is over-the-top in his mean spiritedness in this, his debut novel. He is downright gleeful in his mocking. This is Satire for Beginners, but it’s good stuff.

The target is American consumer culture, derided from the first chapter when we see a Sellevision channel host getting fired after he accidentally exposes himself during a Toys for Tots segment.

The plot doesn’t have Burroughs’ signature wit, but he makes up with it with snark for his characters and creations (Moisure-Whik Panties, anyone?).

In fact, because Burroughs is so clearly going for camp and not depth, this is my favorite work by him. I don’t like Burroughs, navel-gazer as much as Burroughs, Mean Queen. It’s not high art, but it will do.