Lunar Park
By Bret Easton Ellis
Knopf

It’s been too long since Bret Easton Ellis wrote a book this good. Lunar Park is a total return to form. It might be better than the Rules of Attraction. It isn’t as good as Less than Zero or American Psycho, but that’s kind of OK because it functions as a continuation of both those books. The main character here is Ellis himself, cast as a washed-up novelist being haunted by addiction, writer’s block, horniness, and the ghosts of two of his most well-known characters—yuppie murderer Patrick Bateman and over-it L.A. teen Clay. And when I say haunted by them, I mean haunted like a ghost story. Oh, and also Ellis’s dad come back from the dead. I could get nerdy and talk about how this all plays with the line between fiction, memoir, and horror, or I could just say buy the book. Buy the book.

JANE BLIPS



The Original 50 Cent
Infamous Times

Three documentaries on this. The first is an overlong but amusing documentary about the Fort Greene midget crack dealer that the rapper 50 Cent took his name from. The other two, far more entertaining, segments are about a load of morons running a hip hop strip club and some even bigger morons extolling the virtues of gang violence and dog fighting in New York.

DVDs like this are valuable because they show suburban white people just how grimy, dangerous and depressing the real life of a “gangsta” actually is. This is why every hip-hop video needs a million camera angles, a thousand rented cars and an army of stylists. The truth behind all their minstrel bullshit, titties and fake Louis Vitton bikinis makes you want to weep.

ANDY CAPPER



Nathan Barley
Channel 4

Anybody who’s a target of this show either pretends they haven’t seen it or they think it’s boring. Truth is, it’s fucking funny. There’s even a nod to Vice on here, which is not surprising because we’re Charlie Booker’s favourite magazine. When he’s not propping his half-formed “extreme VIZ” shtick up with Chris Morris’ genius he sits on the bog crying and wanking off at how much funnier/popular we are than him, the fucking miserable cunt who never gets laid.

DAN ASHCROFT



North Drive Press
Edited by Matt Keegan

Ah, a refreshing cool breeze in the fetid stinkhouse known as publishing. This zine, if you can call such a luxury object a zine, utterly blows out of the water all the vanity mags, posters, and farts that bury us at the office.

North Drive Press, which is a stack of ephemera by various artists packed in a cardboard box, is like looking inside a great curator’s brain and pulling out little files and going, “Hey what’s this,” and then he tells you all about it, but he tells you in these sheaths of loose interviews done, like all the rest of NDP, in stunningly simple and elegant design.

JESSE PEARSON



Roseanne
The Complete Series
Anchor Bay

Maybe you need to have an inner riot grrl to fully appreciate this show, but fuck it. Roseanne ruled. It was a good reflection of the working class without being precious, it was actually funny, and John Goodman is the boomer-age dad we all should have had.

JUNE SPRIG