Nonfiction offers a ticket to hidden worlds

No big thrills
Comic Wendy Spero originally used anecdotes about such matters as her mother’s boyfriends, her own OCD, and her conflicted feelings about the deceased father she never knew into a pair of one-woman shows — “Microthrills” and “Who’s Your Daddy?”  She's since adapted those into “Microthrills” (Hudson Street Press, $22). The title refers to the pleasure Spero derives from unremarkable things: “There are few traditional outlets for thrill-seekers like me, so I find excitement where it feels more manageable — in a world filled instead with bursting rubber chickens, smelly markers, and edible babies … It is my small, safe, fun compromise between adventure and banality.”

Spero’s book is a small, safe compromise between adventure and banality, too — not so uproarious that one risks physical injury from laughter, but cute enough to sustain interest. The degree to which the reader enjoys the book will be in direct proportion to how little Wendy’s and her mother’s character quirks grate on you. Mrs. Spero is apparently a lifelong New Yorker, but is terrified of the subway and suspicious even of cabs after dark. Wendy Spero, in young adulthood, distinguishes herself at her office job by leaving sticky traces of her candy addiction on every surface.

A person who has no patience for women’s learned helplessness will not finish Spero’s book. But if you can think of Wendy as a fictional character as opposed to an actual person who planned to live in Los Angeles without knowing how to drive, “Microthrills” could be an enjoyable, yet forgettable, read.    —Tara Ariano

‘Jeans’ could use some alterations
The topic of “Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon” (by MSNBC.com contributor James Sullivan, $26, Gotham Books) would seem to be a sure bet as a subject for non-fiction. It’s a history of denim dungarees, an article of utilitarian clothing in almost every closet in the world. But the too-cute book, printed in blue text with sparse, uninspiring historical photos, overreaches. It’s got plenty of history: you’ll find out what pants of the late 1800s looked like, how they were stitched, what was on their labels and what hyperbolic advertising slogans were used to sell them. Rarer is human insight into the figures who made jeans significant, from the colonies to Calvin Klein.

By the time the book reaches the present day, where low-rise jeans, baggy denim and $500 collectible jeans have blindsided companies like Levi Strauss & Co., the book has become wearying in its attention to trivia over storytelling. Sullivan also fails to convincingly show that jeans are any more American than iPods, tax evasion or cheeseburgers. He writes, “Paul Bunyan wore jeans. So did the Marlboro Man and Howdy Doody, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol.” They probably also all wore underwear too; do boxers or briefs also signify a unique form of American individualism?

For every promising chapter on the “Sticky Fingers” album cover or the influence on cowboy wear on American culture, there’s an uninteresting section about indigo manufacturing or hipster teens from the 50s with their crazy pegged pants. The subject gets away from Sullivan, who fails to nail it with more than a catalog of well-researched facts and too-brief portraits of obsessive collectors and designer jean dealers.    —Omar L. Gallaga

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