Whether you're starting your spring break or just slacking off work for another week, there's no better way to wile away your idle hours than reading through Mark Dery's new collection of essays I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts.

I'm a Dery fan from way back, having run his Marx-by-way-of-Brother Theodore media criticism at Suck.com and the L.A. Times. A few of those old chestnuts have made their way into the book, including this meditation (now safely entombed behind latimes.com's firewall) on the Bush family and the curious way that the "wimp" label inexplicably attached to bona fide war hero George H.W. Bush was exorcised by his feckless, often-wrong-but-never-in-doubt son.

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